The University of Brawijaya was named after the kings of the kingdom of Majapahit whose reign over part of Indonesia ended in the 15th century. The university was established as a state institution in 1963.
With the motto of "Building the Glory of the Future", it aims to be a "World Class Entrepreneurial University". It was founded with law and economics faculties inherited from Sawerigadang Makassar University and administrative science and agriculture departments from the Municipal University of Malang. It has grown in little more than half a century into a 16-faculty university with more than 50,000 students.
Places on its four campuses, two in the west of Malang City and others in Kediri and Jakarta, are much sought-after with only two of Indonesia’s other 84 state universities receiving more applications in the 2018 national entry test. This test along with the university's own admissions test determines admissions. It was rated 12th in the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education’s rankings for 2018.
It has a tradition of high-quality student enterprise. Six students have won PIMNA national student science awards, while an app developed to help small and medium-sized enterprises market their products was one of 10 Grand Prize winners from 606 entries in the Seoul International Invention Fair in 2018.
A few teams of students from the university entered the International Union of Food Science and Technology product development competition in Mumbai in 2018. Three of the four students, whose method of making rice from sago, corn and elephant foot yam won three of the five gold medals there, as did all of the team who devised a means of turning banana skins and orange peel into energy drinks. All of these students were female.
