The system is governed by a nine-member Board of Regents appointed by the governor of Texas.

[5] The system owns and manages a 9,269-acre (3,751 ha) property encompassing much of the Christmas Mountains located adjacent to Big Bend National Park in southern Brewster County.

The remote tract is regulated under strict conservation easements ensuring preservation in its natural state.

The property serves as an open-air classroom for the system's member institutions and a laboratory for their research efforts.

Sul Ross established upper-division and post-graduate study centers in 1973 on campuses of Southwest Texas Junior College in Del Rio, Eagle Pass, and Uvalde.

[8][23] Southwest Texas State opened an extension center in 1996 housed in temporary buildings adjacent to a Round Rock high school.

After a 2004 land donation, the permanent Texas State University Round Rock Campus was opened in 2005.

O. Henry Hall is a former U.S. post office and federal building and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

[34] The system headquarters was previously in the Thomas J. Rusk State Office Building, 200 East 10th Street, Suite 600, in Downtown Austin,[28]: 29  and it occupied space in two other state office buildings in Downtown.

All of its comprehensive universities are regarded as stand-alone institutions equal in stature under system administration.

All three of the TSUS' two-year institutions offering associate degrees and professional certifications are located in the state's two most southeastern counties, Jefferson and Orange, in the Golden Triangle region where the Gulf Coast meets the Louisiana state line.

The three institutions, along with LIT's extension center in Silsbee located in Hardin County, are within the Beaumont–Port Arthur metropolitan area.

Branch locations of the system's comprehensive universities only offer upper-division (junior and senior) undergraduate and graduate coursework.