[12] The university's main campus in Coral Gables spans 240 acres (0.97 km2), has over 5,700,000 square feet (530,000 m2) of buildings, and is located 7 miles (11 km) southwest of downtown Miami, the heart of the nation's ninth-largest and world's 65th-largest metropolitan area.

In 1925, George E. Merrick, founder of Coral Gables, granted 160 acres (0.6 km2) and nearly $5,000,000[22] ($86.9 million, adjusted for current inflation) for the university's founding.

[26] But by 1926, as the first class of 372 students enrolled at the new university,[27] the land boom had collapsed and hopes for a speedy recovery were dashed by the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926.

[29] A reconstituted ten-member board chaired by the university's first president Bowman Foster Ashe included Merrick, David Fairchild, James Cash Penney, and others.

Following enactment of Title IX in 1972 and over a decade of litigation, University of Miami organizations, including honorary societies, were opened to women's participation and inclusion.

[46] Under Foote's leadership, the university focused on attracting high-quality faculty and students, and consciously limited or reduced undergraduate admissions as part of its strategic plan.

[56] From these proceeds, over half, $854 million, was allocated to construct and improve the University of Miami's Leonard M. School of Medicine medical campus.

The debate, moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS NewsHour, was held on the University of Miami campus inside the Watsco Center.

The strike settled May 1, 2006 when a card count union vote was permitted and led to establishment of the first collective bargaining unit in the university's history.

[64] In 2011, the university was ranked the nation's most fiscally responsible nonprofit organization in a Charity Navigator report published in collaboration with Worth magazine.

In February 2018, rap artist Drake filmed substantial portions of the music video for his song "God's Plan" on the University of Miami campus.

[97] The heart of the School of Medicine campus, the original City of Miami Hospital that opened in 1918, is known colloquially as "The Alamo", and has been named to the National Register of Historic Places.

The University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science maintains its 18 acres (73,000 m2) campus on the Biscayne Bay waterfront on Virginia Key.

The facility researches the summertime transport of dust particles from the Sahara in North Africa across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Basin and South America.

[105] The school's origins date back to 1945 when construction began on Rickenbacker Causeway to make Virginia Key accessible by car.

During the Causeway's construction, Miami-Dade County offered the university a part of the island adjacent to Miami Seaquarium in exchange for it agreeing to assume operational management of the aquarium.

[106] In 1951, however, the aquarium's construction was delayed following the failure of a bond referendum designed to fund it, and the university instead chose to begin leasing the land from the county.

In 2009, the University of Miami received a $15 million federal grant to help construct a 56,500 square feet (5,250 m2) Marine Technology and Life Sciences Seawater Research Building on the Rosenstiel School campus.

Another section of the property, established in 1948, was called South Campus and included a 350 acres (1,400,000 m2) plot used for university-sponsored agricultural and horticultural research.

In August 2006, the University of Miami agreed to reimburse the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers $393,473 for clean up costs at the site made available under the 1980 Superfund law.

[109] Six buildings on the site provide 63,800 sq ft (5,930 m2)[97] and currently house the Global Public Health Research Group, Miami Institute for Human Genomics, and Forensic Toxicology Laboratory.

[111] The Richmond campus is a 76 acres (310,000 m2) site that was formerly the United States Naval Observatory Secondary National Time Standard Facility, which already had buildings and a 20M antenna used for long interferometry.

[117] In January 2017, the Jay I. Kislak Foundation announced it was making a substantial donation of rare books, maps, and manuscripts to the university's libraries.

[118] The University of Miami currently employs 2,850 full-time faculty members with 99 percent of them holding either doctorates or terminal degrees in their respective specialties.

[135] As of November 2020, the University of Miami ranks eleventh nationally in combined diversity across racial, geographic, gender and age factors.

[26] Since 1982, the board has developed eleven visiting committees, which include both trustees and outside experts to assist in overseeing the university's 12 academic units.

[178] As of 2008, the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science receives $50 million in annual external research funding.

[181] The university owns Little Salt Spring, a National Register of Historic Places site,[182] in North Port, Florida, where the Rosenstiel School performs archaeological and paleontological research.

[211] Prior to moving to Hard Rock Stadium, from 1937 through 2007, the Hurricanes played their home football games at the Miami Orange Bowl in Little Havana.

Among them are former Honduran president Porfirio Lobo Sosa, former Peruvian president Fernando Belaúnde, former Belize prime minister Dean Barrow, former Iceland prime minister Bjarni Benediktsson, economist and former Bahamas Central Bank governor Wendy Craigg, former Peruvian vice president and minister Mercedes Aráoz, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and writing professor Donald Justice, actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Grammy Award-winning musicians Gloria Estefan, Bruce Hornsby, Enrique Iglesias, Jaco Pastorius, and Jon Secada, chief executive officers of various companies, public officials, heads of governmental agencies, scientists, academics, media personalities, authors and writers, and multiple professional athletes in Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NFL, including eleven NFL Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees.