The University of Warwick was established in 1965, during the expansion of British higher education that produced the group of campus institutions later known as plate glass universities, alongside Sussex, York, Lancaster and Kent. Its name comes from the Warwickshire county town rather than from its actual setting, a legacy of the land arrangements that created the site. Professional schools followed in quick succession: a business school in 1967, a law school in 1968, the Warwick Manufacturing Group in 1980 and a medical school in 2000. The university also absorbed Coventry College of Education in 1979 and horticultural research facilities at Wellesbourne in 2004.

Academic work is divided among three faculties, covering Arts, Science, Engineering and Medicine, and Social Sciences, which together contain around thirty departments. Mathematics, statistics, economics and management are among the fields for which the university is best known, anchored by the Mathematics Institute, the Department of Economics and Warwick Business School. The business school is a department of the university rather than a separate institution, though it also teaches from a base at the Shard in London. Enrolment reached 27,880 in 2024/25, including roughly 8,400 postgraduates, with about 3,795 academic staff, and a substantial share of students come from outside the United Kingdom.

Warwick belongs to the Russell Group and to the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, and it reported 147.5 million pounds in research grants and contracts within a total income of 859.9 million pounds for 2024/25. More than forty research centres and institutes operate across the faculties, and scholarship associated with the university includes contributions to complexity theory, contract theory and the study of international political economy. The main campus covers roughly 290 hectares on the south-western edge of Coventry, about five kilometres from the city centre and straddling the boundary with Warwickshire. Despite the name, it does not lie in the town of Warwick.