Classes for 367 full-time and 200 part-time students began in September, 1970, held in buildings at the Kamloops Indian Residential School for that first year.

Cariboo's vocational division, now known as the School of Trades and Technology, was established following the move of the college to the new campus built along McGill Road in September 1971.

[7] The following year, the Universities Act gave OLI power to grant baccalaureate degrees in arts or science in its own name.

As enrolment rose, Cariboo College built more than a dozen new facilities and an on-campus student housing complex, as well as renovating and expanding older buildings.

In 1971, the college opened a satellite campus in Williams Lake, BC, 285 kilometres north of Kamloops, offering programs to surrounding communities, including remote Indigenous populations.

In 1985, the Williams Lake campus moved to the 55,000 square-foot Hodgeson Road facility, which would later close due to seismic instability.

Cariboo's five bachelor's degrees — Arts, Science, Education, Business Administration and Nursing — were initially developed and granted under the oversight of the province's three established universities: UBC, SFU and UVic.

Construction in the 1990s included a cost-recovery-based joint proposal between UCC and the student society to complete the 53,000 square-foot, student-focused Campus Activity Centre, after a change in provincial legislation in 1990 allowed the college to borrow money privately for development.

The province designated TRU as a special-purpose university that would continue to offer undergraduate and master's degrees, vocational training and adult basic education, undertake research and scholarly activities and, with the addition of Open Learning programs and courses, would provide an open learning educational credit bank for students.

[18] Fairbairn had previously resigned from the University of Saskatchewan in 2014 following a scandal regarding his decision to terminate the head of the school's Health Director and have him escorted off campus by security.

[22] The TRU Faculty Association passed a vote of non-confidence in the leadership of President Bett Fairbairn, and Board Chair Marilyn McLean.

[citation needed] On 17 January 2023 TRU released a heavily redacted report from their $1 million investigation that substantiated 10 allegations.

[28] TRU's 250-acre main campus in Kamloops is situated on McGill Road in the city's southwest Sahali area, overlooking the junction of the North and South Thompson rivers from which the university takes its name.

As part of Cariboo's application to become a university college in 1989, the first campus plan was developed with the requirement that every building have an official name.

UCC doubled the size of the Library and Science buildings and opened the Computer Access Centre downtown on Victoria Street in 1991.

It was the first TRU building to be awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold status for sustainable construction.

Its adjoining theatre-in-the-round has a ceiling made of pine-beetle-killed pine wood and a green roof in a design modelled after an Interior Salish pit house.

The TRU Faculty of Law moved into the 44,000-square-foot addition in December 2013 and officially launched the space to coincide with convocation of its first graduating class in June 2014.

The two-storey, state-of-the-art centre features classrooms, lab and shop areas, and it connects to the adjacent Trades and Technology building via a covered walkway.

The changes made possible by the new building enable collaboration, applied research and training spanning the sciences and engineering disciplines.

The building is a 4,550-square-metre facility encompassing classrooms, patient simulation labs, interdisciplinary health clinics, home-care space, student lounges and breakout rooms.

Equipped with advanced technology, high-fidelity simulation manikins and space similar to that of real health-care settings, these labs will better prepare students for working conditions after graduation.

Aside from increasing density and enhancing campus life, the university village development will also provide a revenue stream that will raise money for scholarships, bursaries and research.

A corporate trustee, TRU Community Trust (TRUCT), was created as a way for the development to progress but remain at arm's length from the university, which under current provincial post-secondary risk management policies, cannot directly control the project.

TRU is a public post-secondary institution, funded by the province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training.

As legislated by the province in the Thompson Rivers University Act, the purposes of the university are to offer baccalaureate and master's degree programs, to offer post-secondary and adult basic education and training, to undertake and maintain research and scholarly activities, and to provide an open learning educational credit bank for students.

The president and vice-chancellor is the chief executive officer, responsible to the Board and Senate for the supervision of TRU's administrative and academic work.