The University's foundation stone was laid by King George V on 19 July 1920 and 89 students (including eight female students) enrolled that same year. By September 1939, there were 65 staff and 485 students.
In 1947 there were just two permanent buildings on campus: Singleton Abbey and the library. The Principal, J S Fulton, recognised the need to expand the estate and had a vision of a self-contained community, with residential, social and academic facilities on a single site. His vision was to become the first university campus in the UK.
By 1960 a large-scale development programme was underway that would see the construction of new halls of residence, the Maths and Science Tower, and College House (later renamed Fulton House). The 1960s also saw the development of the "finite element method" by Professor Olek Zienkiewicz. His technique revolutionised the design and engineering of manufactured products, and Swansea was starting to stake its claim as an institution that demanded to be taken seriously.
Work began on the student village at Hendrefoelan in 1971, the South Wales Miners' Library was established in 1973 and the  Taliesin Arts Centre  opened on campus in 1984. The Regional Schools of Nursing transferred to Swansea in 1992, and the College of Medicine opened in 2001. Technium Digital was completed in 2005 and, barely two years later, the University opened its  Institute of Life Science , which commercialises the results of research undertaken in the  Swansea University Medical School . Work commenced on a second Institute of Life Science in 2009.
In 2012, Swansea began an ambitious campus expansion and development project, including the opening Bay Campus in 2015; which is home to the  College of Engineering  and the  School of Management . In 2018 two further projects developed -   The College ; Swansea University's joint venture with Navitas (The International College Wales Swansea, ICWS) and the  Computational Foundry ; the home of the College of Science's departments of  Computer Science  and  Mathematics.  
Today, there are more than 20,000 students enrolled and the university is ranked in the top 30 in the UK!