The university was founded as a branch of the University of Garyounis (now known as the University of Benghazi) in the year 1989. In 1992, it became an autonomous institution and was then known as Al Tahaddi University which was later re-named as Sirte University (SU) in 2010.
Since it gained its autonomous status, the university has been continuously expanding and has become one of well-recognised higher education institutions in Libya. Starting off with a few schools and academic departments, the university has at present 10 different schools on and off-campus and with more than 10000 students.
The university currently employs about 400 full-time teaching staff and 53 are contractual foreign employees from Arab and non-Arab countries. The university also employs 1750 non-academic staff in different departments and offices across the university.
The university is also trying to enhance self-learning and research culture among its students by building a new and comprehensive library with more than 100000 resource materials. The university has also established a Languages Centre in a hope of improving the standards of English language among its students and to provide pre-sessional English courses for students who have awarded scholarships to do their masters and PhD degrees abroad. In addition, another aim of the languages Centre is to teach languages other than English, namely, French, Italian, Spanish and German in the near future, Inside the main campus there also are a Research and Consultation Center which is offering the Consulting Study , Support academic by consulting faculties, Publish the researches in the university Journal.
Moreover, as part of its on-going plan of expansion, the university is currently undertaking major construction projects. One of these projects is to build University City with up-to-date facilities and equipment in order to improve the learning environment for the students which would help them to perform better and achieve higher standards Sirte University is committed to activities targeting the transfer of scientific, technical and creative knowledge to society and the improvement of society and a sustainable environment.
Sirte University as a higher education institution in involved in many international cooperation
programmes. It also engaged in several international agreements (MOU) with different educational universities and other organizations from all over the world. Those agreements and programmes include different areas of activities such as post- graduate studies, student’s exchange , training programmes and capacity building. So managing such projects and agreements are considering the responsibility of the international cooperation office. The international cooperation office (ICO) acts as a window to the university. It tries to reach the internationalisation which every university seeks to achieve. In this connection, the mission of the (ICO) is to support the university locally and internationally through the international agreements and scientific projects in order to achieve its globalisation.
The University commitment to the community and the increasing need for expertise in the emerging economies to develop public policies that meet institutional standards, ICO aims to participate in the cooperation with a partnership of international organizations in expanding the assistance of the social, economic and environmental challenges, On this basis recently Sirte university as some other Libyan universities signed MoU with SMEs and Incubators Unit attached to the Ministry of Economy and Trade , the main purpose of this action is to initiate a branch inside the university Campus to help graduate students to inspire their ideas and help them to start up their business.
The Media Department at Sirte University was established in 2004. The media department is divided into three divisions:
1- Broadcasting (TV and Radio)
2- Press Journalism
3- Public relations
The study programme in the department consists of eight semesters cover the three main areas
mentioned above. The media department train 224 students divided into: 130 students in the
broadcasting, 51 students in the press journalism, and 43 students in public relation studies. The
department also contains ten members of academic staff lecturing in the three different divisions listed above.
Since it was established in 2004, the department doesn’t contain any labs or multimedia centre that can help students to practice and improve their journalistic skills, and the curriculum at the department is mainly taught theoretically.