Located just outside the provincial capital of Pangkal Pinang in the Merawang subdistrict of Bangka Regency, it is the only public university (Indonesian: Perguruan Tinggi Negeri) in the province.

Formed by a merger of 3 higher education institutes in 2006 and formally inaugurated on 2010, the university currently hosts around 4,000 students with an annual intake of over 1,000 freshmen.

Initially, the province had no major state universities, although there were multiple polytechnics and Sekolah Tinggi (Higher Education Institutes).

On 12 April 2006, three such institutes: Politeknik Manufaktur Timah (Polman Timah), Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Pertanian Bangka and Sekolah Tinggi Teknik Pahlawan 12 merged into UBB in accordance with Ministry of Education Decision number 52/D/O/2006.

[6][8] In 2017, the university was rated 246th out of 3,244 HEIs in Indonesia by the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education.