At the time of its foundation in 1586 College began offering higher education in Guadalajara, and as a result, it was the first institution that granted academic degrees.

The first one who requested to establish a university in Guadalajara was Friar Felipe Galindo y Chavez who, in 1696, asked the King Charles II of Spain to increase the range of the recently founded Royal Seminary of San Jose.

The proposition of Friar Felipe was reconsidered by the lawyer Matias Angel de la Mota Padilla, who, in 1750, was able to involve the Guadalajara's city hall into the project.

Moreover, on December 12, 1771, arrived to Guadalajara the new bishop to Nueva Galicia, Friar Antonio Alcalde y Barriga, who significantly supported the foundation of the university.

In 1775 the Friar replied a grit from King Charles III of Spain, who consulted him about the convenience of establishing a university in Nueva Galicia.

This writ arrived to the authorities in Nueva Galicia on March 26, 1792, who proceeded to celebrate and quickly revamp the said Santo Tomas College.

By mutual agreement between the Friar Antonio Alcalde and the president of the Royal Audience, Jacobo de Ugarte y Loyola, Jose Maria Gomez y Villaseñor was named as the first Rector of the university.

Fortunately, a later State's Governor, Jose Maria Yañez Carillo, proclaimed 1853 the assimilation of the Institute of Sciences into the University of Guadalajara, so the later recovered its traditional patrimony.

At the time the Plan of Ayutla got the triumph around 1855, the State's Governor, José Santos Degollado, proclaimed the second enclosed order to the university and the reestablishment of the Institute of Sciences.

Derived from the worries that many intellectuals and artists manifested in the reunions at the "Centro Bohemio," the conference given by the engineer Juan Salvador Agraz Ramirez de Prado about a project to establish the "National University of Guadalajara" and the new orientations that the Mexican Revolution brought about in 1910, the Jalisco State's Governor, Jose Guadalupe Zuno Hernandez, reopened the University of Guadalajara by third time in 1925 and named Enrique Diaz de Leon as its Rector.

In the First Congress of Universities that took place at Mexico City, the Rector Diaz de Leon supported the socialist education, but when he tried to carry it out in Guadalajara, several student's protests happened.

This purposes were established in the Institutional Development Programme: A Future Vision, presented in 1989 by the Rector Raúl Padilla López, who is regarded for accomplishing the modernization the university.

The Rector is chosen by the vote of the members of the General University Council and stays in office for six years, beginning the first day of April.

From all students in educational programs, 43 are abroad: 27 are in the United States, 4 in Ecuador, 3 in Colombia, 2 in Spain, 2 in Canada, and the rest of them in Bulgaria, Chile, Peru, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

Each year editors, literary agents, reading promoters, translators, book dealers and librarians attend looking for commercial and professional interactions.

Papirolas begins in 1995 as a part of the Guadalajara International Book Fair with the aim to create an exclusive area for youth and children through interactive expositions and diverse artistic shows.

It holds several concerts, markets and conferences which are a meeting point for professionals in the industry like composers, musicians, audio engineers, record labels, producers, and editors.

With the aim to give the Jalisco's community an area of cultural presentations in a facility that holds important creations of the muralist José Clemente Orozco, the Rector of the University of Guadalajara, Raúl Padilla López, managed to use the ground floor of the General Rectory Building as a museum.

This laboratory aims to boost projects that experiment with aesthetics through the creation of a critique forum of researching and collaboration among Division's students.

The Cavatet Studio Theater made it possible to cover the need that the Guadalajara Metropolitan Area had for facilities to host alternative shows of national and international reputation.

It also represents a stimulation to the artistic and cultural activities in the city, since it allows the presentation of premium shows with the involvement of local, national and international productions.

The Jalisco's Experimental Theater, whose building was designed by the architect Eric Coufal, was opened up on December 6, 1960, and is part of the National Cultural Heritage.

It is also home of the Telmex Auditorium, the Bicentenary Plaza and the "Juan Jose Arreola" Public Library of the State of Jalisco, moreover there are two projects that are currently under their building process which are the Environmental Sciences Museum and the Performing Arts Complex.

The "Juan Jose Arreola" Public Library of the State of Jalisco has the aim to preserve, guard and offer a free access to its large catalogue of contemporary and historic books.

With the largest bibliography of the State and a huge quantity of historic documents (some with 500 years of history) the Library is a really important space for studying and researching.

In 2001, the University General Council name it as the "Juan Jose Arreola" Public Library of the State of Jalisco in memory of the writer who had been its headmaster since 1991 until his death in 2001.

The Environmental Sciences Museum will be the first of its kind in Mexico which will devote to show natural and social environments of the region, the nation and the continent.

It will be strongly attached to the regional identity of Jalisco that, along with Guadalajara, covers a design of five sustainability edges: ecology, economy, politics, culture and society.

This is a project of the University of Guadalajara which is composed by eight radio stations that cover the mid-west region of Mexico with the aim to serve as a tide with the community.

The university extends its reach and goes beyond boundaries to offer academic opportunities to Mexicans living in Los Angeles, creating, at the same time, bonds with their Latin American roots.