After a change of the Lower Saxony Higher Education Act, since June 2010 it may now officially call itself a university.
Vechta as a place of study has been in existence since August 2, 1830 with the establishment of a normal school for the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg.
After the end of the Nazi-period, it was re-established (on 19 March 1946) as a confessionally bound State Pedagogical Academy Vechta.
In 1965, the Lower Saxony Concordat guaranteed the education of Catholic teachers in Vechta.
In the meantime the existence was massively endangered; in 1987 it even came to the recommendation of the Science Council to close the college.