Prince Sultan University was inaugurated in 1999 by the late Crown Prince HRH Sultan bin Abdulaziz, who was then Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector General.
It had been established earlier by the Al-Riyadh Philanthropic Society for Science (RPSS) under the auspices of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, when he was the Governor of Riyadh Region and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the RPSS.
Thus, King Salman was instrumental in establishing PSU and has remained its enthusiastic patron ever since.
The idea behind PSU’s establishment originated with the Riyadh business community.
It was dedicated to HRH Sultan bin Abdulaziz to celebrate his homecoming after successful medical treatment abroad.
HRH congratulated the community on its initiative and pledged his continuous support to the institution.
This support was exemplified by a generous donation and by HRH’s inclusion of PSU in his subsequent agreement with the University of Oxford.
PSU was originally founded as a private college (1999) but was raised to the status of the university by the Ministry of Higher Education (2003).
As a non-profit-making institution, it was the first private university in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
As such, it introduced private higher education in the Kingdom when it was most needed.
It received its first enrollment at the start of academic year 1999/2000 (1420/1421 AH).
This consisted of 152 students, taught by 16 faculty members.
Now the University has over 4000 students, and over 400 diversified faculty members (as of 2015/2016).
It consists of 5 colleges: Business, Computer and Information Science, Engineering, Law, and Humanities.
PSU is the first private university to have been granted institutional accreditation.