It has multiple branch locations across the United States and countries across Europe, Asia, and Africa.

During the early 1940s, many local priests, especially the Jesuits, challenged the segregationist policies at the city's Catholic colleges and parochial schools.

[14] However, in 1943 Archbishop John J. Glennon blocked that student's enrollment by speaking privately with the Kentucky-based Superior General of the Sisters of Loretto.

[15] The Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American newspaper with national circulation, discovered Glennon's actions and ran a front-page feature on the Webster incident in February 1944.

[16] The negative publicity toward Glennon's segregationist policies led Saint Louis University to begin admitting African American students in summer 1944.

[17] In the fall of 1945, Webster College responded to pressure by admitting Irene Thomas, a Catholic African-American woman from St. Louis, as a music major.

The school's then-president, Sr Jacqueline Grennan, renounced her religious vows and continued as head of what had effectively become a secular institution.

In addition to its own international campuses, Webster has also formed partnerships with a few universities that are based in their countries of interest.

[34] In 2015, Webster released a report on its Thailand campus citing several issues, including badly inadequate facilities and a culture of distrust between students and the administration.

Professors for the university have included Chess grandmaster Susan Polgar, actor/dancer Lara Teeter, dancer Alicia Graf Mack, poet David Clewell,[44] video artist Van McElwee,[45] political scientists Daniel Hellinger and Johannes Pollak, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Violence Against Women Rashida Manjoo,[46] activist and writer Sulak Sivaraksa, sound engineer Bill Porter, Holocaust scholar Harry J. Cargas, and former Missouri Governor Bob Holden.