At the end of the Second Empire, the first four faculties co-existed, but the most important was the law school, which contained three-quarters of the students and the most renowned teachers.

At the same time, freedom of higher education was proclaimed in France, leading to the founding in 1877 of the Catholic University of Toulouse, a private not-for-profit institution recognised as being in the public interest.

Unlike the French Grandes écoles, public university education is open enrollment, tuition is often more affordable, and registration does not require attendance at a post-high school preparatory school (French: prépa or Classe préparatoire aux grandes écoles).

The aim of this project is to pool the skills and expertise of the different partners in order to provide high quality education, common curricula and increased student mobility, as well as a European research network.

[10] The different academic disciplines of UT1 are:[1] The University offers a number of degree programs in management, economic, law, and technology taught in English-only.

The research centers are involved in numerous projects and scientific cooperation networks with foreign partners, particularly Canadian and Japanese.

On the two sites of the Arsenal and the Anciennes Facultés, a 2 minutes' walk from Place du Capitole, are located most lecture halls and classrooms as well as the main library on the Toulouse campus.

Also in the center of Toulouse, the Manufacture des Tabacs, between the Garonne river and the Brienne canal is where most research and library centres are to be found.

The IUT has modern premises and equipment: 1 documentation center, 1 amphitheater, 1 technology hall, 2 learning labs, and 2 multimedia laboratories.

[21][22][23] As a collective higher education structure, the Federal University of Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées is the fourth largest in France with over 130,000 students, faculty, and staff.

Initially an inter-university library, its social sciences section was constituted as a Collective Service of Documentation in 1995.

The Arsenal library, representative of the modern architectural movement(Brutalism), was built in 1972 by the architects Paul de Noyers and Noël Le Maresquier.

In terms of written and documentary heritage, 320,000 e-books complete a collection of 568,000 printed works, 57,000 theses and dissertations.

This was notably the case for José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain's former socialist prime minister, honored in 2015.