As of 2016, the university enrolled 295 students, including 43 Cistercians, 40 from other religious institutes, and 75 diocesan seminarians, the rest being lay men and women.

It is the only university administered by the Cistercian Order and the largest educational institution for priests and religious in the German-speaking world.

Since 1802, a state-accredited and Church-recognized institution of higher education has operated, originally organized as a seminary to train Cistercian priests from the Zwettl, Heiligenkreuz, Neukloster, and Lilienfeld abbeys, all located in Lower Austria.

After Vatican II, enrollment grew rapidly after the college, then known by its Latin name, Institutum Theologicum, came to the attention of the Bishop of Regensburg, Rudolf Graber.

By 1976, as the college was offering graduate degrees and opening enrollment to lay students, it was granted university status by the Austrian government.

In May 2002, professors and students made a trip to Rome, where they were received in a papal audience by Pope John Paul II.

On 28 January, the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas, Benedict raised the college to the rank of pontifical university.

[5] They are as follows: Studium Generale is a curriculum in which the Pope Benedict XVI University partners with the International Theological Institute in Trumau.