[15] On 6 September 2013, the Victorian Parliament passed legislation to establish Federation University Australia,[16] The name change officially began in 2014.

The then Vice-Chancellor justified the name change as an attempt to broaden the reach of the university nationally and internationally, and in fairness to the campuses outside Ballarat.

The former Ballarat Gaol, a maximum security prison that operated from 1862 until 1965, was located on the site of the university's School of Mines (SMB) campus, at the southern end of Lydiard Street.

Nursing has the highest enrolment rate at the Berwick Campus, with a focus also on education courses, IT, and psychology.

More than 1350 people are employed by tenants at the technology park and approximately half of those holding Federation University Australia qualifications.

Recently IBM decided to expand its workforce with the construction of a new $10 million building on the park.

The research priority areas of the university are information forensics and security, transformative and preventative health, dynamic landscapes, history and heritage, and improving policy and practice in VET.

[31] The Australian Government's QILT[a] conducts national surveys documenting the student life cycle from enrolment through to employment.

[32] These surveys place more emphasis on criteria such as student experience, graduate outcomes and employer satisfaction[32] than perceived reputation, research output and citation counts.