It is the biggest technical institution of higher education in Russia, with close ties to local industry in the Urals.

The school has rapidly expanded due to the industrialization program of the Soviet Government, which created a high demand for engineering positions.

In the 1940s, though suffering from a shortage of personnel due to World War II, the USTU received a great stimulus for development as the military needed to increase production for new industrial goods from the plants in the Urals.

Many industrial plants were moved to the Urals due to the partial occupation of Western Russia by Nazi military forces.

It was not until the mid-1990s that the USTU began to find appreciable non-governmental sources of funding, mostly by means of establishing business ties with local industrial enterprises that survived or arose as result of the economical crisis.