多伦多大学始健于1827年，是北美大陆最古老的大学之一，也是世界最重要的研究性大学之一。它坐落于世界上最适合人类居住的城市——多伦多。该大学有3 个校区，300类大学本科专业，32座图书馆。当你漫步于枝繁叶茂的多大校园，穿行于历经百年的古老建筑间，即使是在庞大浩瀚的罗伯兹研究图书馆里，你都可以感受到多伦多大学的另外一面：她细腻地为每个学生的学习与探索都留出了足够的空间。多伦多大学位于多伦多市中心及邻近地区三间学院组成。包括位于多伦多市中心的圣乔治学院（St.George），它于1827年创办，是多大最早的发源 地，现下设七个学院；斯卡伯拉学院（Scarborough）位于多伦多的东北面，始于1964年，离市中心的校园约三十三公里，占地共三百英亩；另一校 园为埃林代尔（Erindale）位于多伦多四面三十三公里外的密西沙加市，于1967年正式启用。1827年，约翰Strachan获得了成立国王的学院的皇家特许。这一学院便是后来多伦多大学的前身。与加拿大其他历史悠久的名校多受教会控制一样，早期的多伦多大学是由英格兰教会控制(其他例子还有王后的由苏格兰教会创立，而浸信会对McMaster甚至一直控制到1957年)。经过一百多年的发展，在加拿大多伦多大学已经是"如果我 称第二，无人敢称第一"。大学的专业从航天技术到动物园学无所不包，而且样样堪称一流。荣获诺贝尔奖的教授人数也是加拿大最多的。在校学生 54000名，其中本科学生人数30，484名， 国际学生总数3，168， 所占比例为6%。师资力量6，000人。
多伦多大学，是加拿大最大的一所现代化综合性大学，位于安大略省的多伦多市。除主校园圣·乔治校园外，还有史喀波鲁校园和恩得尔校园两部分。主校园在市中心，但闹中取静，古建筑和现代化建筑交相辉映，绿草如茵，古树参天，在古朴典雅中，显示出生机勃勃的现代大学气派。
像多伦多这样的巨型大学，在每个可以设想的专业领域，几乎都能提供丰富的课程计划。从航空工程到动物学，从艺术教育到乌克兰研究，从建筑学到精神病学，给学生们提供数以千计的课程，仅在文理学院，就开设了两千门以上的课程。
多大拥有为数众多的专业学院、系和学科，在数量上远远超过加拿大的其他大学。文理学院是多大最大的学术单位，它拥有语言学系、英语系、意大利语系、斯拉夫 语言文学系、社会科学系、历史学系、哲学系、经济系、人类学系、天文学系、植物学系、化学系、计算机科学系、美术系、东亚地区研究系、地理系、地质系、中 东地区及伊斯兰研究系、物理学系、心理学系、数学系、统计系等30个系，共200多个教学计划。文理学院还辖有英尼斯学院、新学院、圣密高学院、三一学 院、大学学院、维多利亚学院、韦氏和学院等9的半独立学院共50多个教学计划。
多伦多大学不仅为加拿大培养了许多人材，而且她的校友中有许多在国外工作，为多大的声誉发挥了良好的影响。在她培养的杰出人物中，有作家和剧作家罗伯逊·戴维斯，文学批评家、作家罗斯罗普·弗莱伊，通讯专家马歇尔·麦克鲁汗，诗人玛格丽特·阿拉伍德，幽默作家斯蒂芬·李科克，电影名导演亚瑟·席勒和诺尔曼·吉维森，名演员唐纳德·苏尔兰德和雷蒙德·马赛，著名医生诺尔曼·白求恩，前总理威廉·莱昂·麦堪赛·金、亚瑟·梅因和莱斯特·皮尔逊，传播媒介名人艾德里安娜·克拉克森和巴巴拉·弗卢，钢琴家格伦·右尔德，歌剧艺术家特丽萨·斯特拉特斯、洛伊斯·马歇尔、乔恩·维克尔斯和毛林·福雷斯特等。
学校设有许多研究机构，它们大多同时从事培养研究生甚至培养本科生的部分工作。这些研究机构包括：
技术和社会发展中心，致力于使教学和研究注意技术的人道、社会和生态学的内涵，寻求将这些综合的知识运用于评价工程方法和结果，使得发展技术与人类的初衷保持和谐一致。
都市与社区研究中心是一个多功能的研究机构，近期研究的方向有房屋市场与加拿大的住房政策研究、民族文化模式与发展趋向研究，社会网络与结构趋势分析、社会生态学、城市环境中的行为规范、发展中国家城市化和城市组织等。
调查科学中心，主要组成部分之一是国土调查。
俄罗斯与东欧研究中心，是1963年在多大成立的加拿大同类机构中最大的一个，也是北美洲最大、最孚众望的研究机构之一，它受命通过组织学术会议、促进与 苏联东欧国家之间的学术交流、支持研究人员的个人研究和出版、对外交官和学生进行语言培训以及对政府或商界进行咨询服务等途径，完成了许多极有成效的工 作。近年来，中心特别注意这一地区的新变化和骚动，并接受了对这些变化进行综合分析以及它们对于加拿大以及全世界的重要性作解释的任务。
图书馆与信息科学研究中心，是加拿大第一个同类研究中心。
其他研究机构还有：宗教研究中心；宗教改革和文艺复兴研究中心（是加拿大仅有的这类中心）；中世纪教皇研究所（是加拿大最古老的人文科学研究机构）；政策 分析研究所；医学研究所；中世纪研究所；多伦多大学枣约克大学联合亚太研究中心；国际研究中心；工业关系中心；保健管理研究所；研究生戏剧研究中心；环境 研究所；航空宇航研究所；环境与保健研究所；犯罪学研究中心；儿童研究所；老龄化问题研究中心等共26个研究机构。
此外，安大略教育科学院所（OISE），建于1965年，为安大略省的事业机构，但学术领导属于多伦多大学。这是一个正崛起的世界性教育机构，第三世界有不少留学生在这儿学习。该所的许美德博士，是国外研究中国教育的权威。
这些机构与66个博士教学计划、14个专业学院和10个教学医院，组成了多伦多大学庞大的科研系统。
多大产生了许多杰出的科研成果，1923年弗雷得利克·班廷与J·J·R麦克劳德以他们（与查尔斯·贝斯特合作）的胰岛素在控制糖尿病中的作用的发现而获 得了诺贝尔奖；约翰C·波兰尼于1986年以在化学文面的领先成就使得激光的开发取得进展而获得诺贝尔奖；1987年2月，天文学家伊思·谢尔顿在智利的 多伦多大学天文台发现了一颗脉冲星，后为人们定名为1987A超新星；1989年，那威·崔，纽曼尔·布瓦尔德和杰克·里约丹等医学研究员，公布了他们分 离出引起纤维囊肿的基因的研究成果。其他的研究成果还有，第一台电子心脏起搏器的研制成功、人造咽喉制造成功、发明肺叶移植术、人造胰、在北美洲首创电子 显微镜。多伦多大学还制成了一种能够测量与分析空气中各种有害微量元素的装置枣超级嗅探器，还研制出了超音速飞行器、微波动力飞机以及可由生物分解、清除 污染的塑料等。
在人文科学和社会科学方面的研究成果包括加拿大历史地图册、加拿大传记词典、伊拉斯穆著作等。其中，数十卷的加拿大传记词典被认为是加拿大有史以来规模最宏大的学术性出版物。

A Brief History of the University of Toronto
 
The University of Toronto was founded as King’s College in 1827 and has evolved into a large and complex institution. It now occupies three campuses: Scarborough and Erindale and the historic St. George campus. It has federated with three smaller universities which are on the St. George campus, and is affiliated with several colleges and institutes. There are ten fully affiliated teaching hospitals in metropolitan Toronto. Faculty conduct research in many places in Canada and around the world.

The University is Canada’s most important research institution and has gained an international reputation for its research. It enrols more students, employs more faculty, and offers a greater range of courses than any other Canadian university.

A liberal arts education is the heart of the undergraduate curriculum at Toronto, and the Faculty of Arts and Science has more students than any other faculty. The education of students for the professions has always been an important part of the University’s role, and the University accordingly maintains a wide range of professional faculties. The University’s insistence on the importance of research in all disciplines has made it the major centre for graduate education in Canada. In many fields it produces a majority of the nation’s doctoral candidates. The quality and range of the programs - undergraduate, graduate and professional - attract students from all parts of the province, from around the country and from abroad.

To support its work of teaching and research, the University has collected a library that is the largest in Canada and among the best in the world. The University maintains many laboratories and specialized aids to research. The Library and many of these research facilities are available for use by members of other universities. The University of Toronto Press Inc. is the chief institution of its kind in Canada and one of the most important scholarly publishers in North America.

Mission

The University of Toronto is committed to being an internationally significant research university, with undergraduate, graduate and professional programs of excellent quality.

Purpose of the University  

The University of Toronto is dedicated to fostering an academic community in which the learning and scholarship of every member may flourish, with vigilant protection for individual human rights, and a resolute commitment to the principles of equal opportunity, equity and justice.

Within the unique university context, the most crucial of all human rights are the rights of freedom of speech, academic freedom, and freedom of research. And we affirm that these rights are meaningless unless they entail the right to raise deeply disturbing questions and provocative challenges to the cherished beliefs of society at large and of the university itself.

It is this human right to radical, critical teaching and research with which the University has a duty above all to be concerned; for there is no one else, no other institution and no other office, in our modern liberal democracy, which is the custodian of this most precious and vulnerable right of the liberated human spirit.

Objectives of the University of Toronto  

The University of Toronto is determined to build on its past achievements and so enhance its research and teaching. The University anticipates that it will remain a large university. It will continue to exploit the advantages of size by encouraging scholarship in a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, sciences and the professions. It will continue to value its inheritance of colleges and federated universities that give many students an institutional home within the large University. It will strive to make its campuses attractive settings for scholarly activity.

Research  

The University will continue to promote high quality research. The University is committed to:

1. Providing an environment conducive to research;
2. Emphasizing research, publication and related professional contributions in defining the career expectations of professorial staff;
3. Ensuring that faculties and schools engaged in undergraduate teaching also engage in graduate teaching and research;
4. Maintaining a capacity to respond selectively to new fields of research as they emerge;
5. Requiring national and international peer assessment of the quality of its programs;
6. Collaborating with other universities, industry, business, the professions, public sector institutions and governments, where appropriate to research objectives;
7. Providing information, library and research services of the highest international standards.

Teaching

The University will strive to ensure that its graduates are educated in the broadest sense of the term, with the ability to think clearly, judge objectively, and contribute constructively to society.
The University wishes to increase its ability to attract students from elsewhere in Canada and abroad, in the belief that while these students gain an education their presence will enrich the experience of students from the local community. In all its teaching programs, the University is committed to:

1. Achieving the highest academic standards;
2. Attracting students whose abilities and aspirations match the programs available;
3. Responding to the needs of a diverse student population;
4. Providing the best possible facilities, libraries and teaching aids;
5. Insisting on the importance of teaching in the career expectations of the professorial staff, recognizing excellence in teaching and providing opportunities to improve teaching;
6. Ensuring that professorial staff normally teach both graduate and undergraduate students;
7. Continuing to attract students from other provinces of Canada and from abroad; 8 Enriching the experience of students by cooperating with and assisting them in the realization of their educational goals especially as these involve their life-long learning and career development, their physical and emotional growth and well-being, their needs, including special or temporary ones, and their cultural and recreational activities.

Undergraduate Education

Undergraduates are taught in the Faculty of Arts and Science and in a number of professional faculties. Students in Arts and Science are registered in a college. They can take classes in their college and use college libraries; some students live in their college; for many their college is the locus of social and sporting activities. For many years there were four colleges on the St. George campus; University College and those of the federated universities, Victoria, St. Michael's and Trinity. In the 1960s, the University reaffirmed its commitment to the college system on the St. George campus by founding Innis, New and Woodsworth colleges to accommodate the increased number of students. At the same time, it founded Scarborough and Erindale colleges. The University continues to regard college life as an important part of undergraduate education.
College life is experienced most fully when students live in residence. The University would like to make it possible for more undergraduates, in Arts and Science, and from the professional faculties, to live in residence.
The University is committed to:

1. Ensuring that the teaching and counselling of undergraduates is a normal obligation of every member of the faculty;
2. Ensuring that professorial staff draw on their research to enrich their teaching;
3. Continuing to welcome, and serve the needs of, qualified students, both full- and part-time, from Metropolitan Toronto and the Province of Ontario and elsewhere;
4. Providing for breadth and depth in all undergraduate programs.

Graduate Education

The quality of graduate education and the quality of research are closely linked in this as in any university. The University of Toronto's determination to remain a major research institution is therefore in itself a commitment to high quality graduate teaching.
Additionally, the University is committed to:

1. Ensuring the provision of a broad range of graduate programs;
2. Ensuring that high standards of scholarship are maintained in all graduate programs by submitting them regularly to international peer review, and strengthening or discontinuing any found wanting;
3. Increasing its ability to provide adequate financial support for graduate students.

Life-long Learning

The University wishes to encourage learning as a life-long activity, and is committed to:

1. Providing to persons in professional practice and to members of the community at large opportunities to study and to use its facilities;
2. Helping other institutions, professional organizations and learned societies through the provision of facilities and expertise.

The University Community

The University of Toronto believes that it best serves Canada and the wider world by pursuing to the limit of its abilities its fundamental mandates of research and teaching in the spirit of academic freedom. In seeking to achieve the above objectives, the University of Toronto is committed to four principles:

1. Respect for intellectual integrity, freedom of enquiry and rational discussion;
2. Promotion of equity and justice within the University and recognition of the diversity of the University community.
3. A collegial form of governance;
4. Fiscal responsibility and accountability.

The University values its graduates as life-long members of the University community who make significant contributions to its on-going life and reputation.
The University recognizes that in the foreseeable future the majority of its funding will come from public sources, and thanks the people of Ontario and of Canada for this support. The University also recognizes that the fulfillment of its mission requires an increase in the level of funding, public and private, and will work to bring this about.
Approved by Governing Council October 15th, 1992