After a long struggle and a relentless movement, the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) was established in 1987. The only university of its kind at that time, it started it’s career on the 14th of February 1991 with only three departments: Physics, Chemistry and Economics, 13 teachers and 205 students. Now, at the end of 2007, it has expanded to 7 schools, 23 departments and one institute. The number of teachers has grown to 368 and the students to 6872. Besides, the University has six affiliated medical colleges under the School of Medical Sciences with 2700 students.
SUST introduced the integrated honours course for the first time in Bangladesh. It introduced the semester system from the 1995-96 session and there was a remarkable improvement in the quality of education after the introduction of this system, which was visible even in the national arena. Every student from SUST has to take two language courses, one in Bangla and the other one in English. Every student also has to take two computer courses, one for computer literacy and the other to learn a computer language. The computer center of SUST offers courses to every employees and one can say, without any hesitation that SUST is the most IT enabled university in this country.