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Founded in 1963 as one of seven new build universities in the 1960s. Initially comprising a main campus (now known as Heslington West) and King's Manor in the city centre, a new campus is under construction and is known as Heslington East. These two main campuses exist to the south-east of York surrounding the village of Heslington, and the city is about a 20 minute walk away. The university has a collegiate system Link with seven undergraduate and one post graduate colleges and all members of the university are assigned to a college. For more information see the university website Link

The original Heslington campus at the University of York is now referred to as Heslington West to differentiate it from the more recent Heslington East campus. Construction began on this campus in 1964, building on the grounds of Heslington Hall. The Hall still remains housing various administrative arms of the university. The west campus is built around a large artificial lake (Scullion's Lake) with Central Hall roughly in the middle of the lake and forming a major landmark on the campus. As well as students, the university is home to large numbers of waterfowl, especially geese (Barnacle, Canadian, Greylag and Lesser Snow), ducks (with a large variety of species), swans (Mute and Black), Coots and Moorhens. Running through the north of the campus is University Road, with Chemistry, Alcuin College, the library and a few other buildings to the north of it. On the south west Heslington Lane runs from Heslington to Fulford splitting Halifax college and 22 acres sports fields from the rest of the campus.

The University of York was built with a collegial system in a similar way to Cambridge, Oxford and Durham. At York, the colleges are principally for accommodation and social reasons rather than for academic teaching (although the colleges are commonly used for splitting teaching into smaller groups within departments). The first college was Derwent College (named after the nearby river) in 1965, quickly followed by Langwith College (named after the nearby common) and in 1968-9 by Vanbrugh College (after John Vanbrugh the architect), Goodricke College (after John Goodricke the astronomer) and Alcuin College (after Alcuin of York). Wentworth College (after Thomas Wentworth), the post graduate only college, was formed in 1972 and completed the originally envisaged colleges. In 1990 James college (after Lord James of Rusholme) was added, initially post-graduate only, it allowed undergraduate entry from 1993. Halifax College only came into being as a college in 2001, although the buildings had existed as overflow accommodation (known as Halifax Court) for several years previous. With university expansion onto Heslington East campus several colleges are departing from their original locations with Goodricke College relocating in 2009 and Langwith College in 2012. The buildings on Heslington West vacated by the departing colleges were acquired by other neighbouring colleges (where other shared descriptions for the specific colleges exist, these reflect the college at the time of the photograph). A ninth college was added to the university in 2014, named Constantine College after the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great was constructed on Heslington East. In 2020 construction began on two further colleges to be located at the western side of Heslington East. College 11 is named Anne Lister College and College 12 David Kato College.

Halifax as a college came into existence in 2003 becoming the eighth college at the University of York. The college is named after the 1st Earl of Halifax. The college consists of 8 courts of accommodation, five which had previously formed Halifax Court, before the colleges existence (Ingram, Irvin, Lindley, Wood and Younger). A sixth existing court named St. Lawrence had provided the post-graduate accommodation until the reopening of Wentworth College as the post-graduate college in 2001 completed the existing buildings. Two new courts were built and named Ainsty and Hickleton as part of the University Partnership Programme.
The college also has a reception and administration building, a bar (formerly called JJ's, which also used to serve (and deliver) pizza), and a Nisa (formerly Costcutter) mini supermarket. The college has no academic departments associated with it. The college sits to the south of Heslington Lane/Main Street and lies alongside 22 acres (the university sports fields) and Heslington Village. Whilst this is part of Heslington West campus, it is a lot more detached from the main campus than the other west campus colleges, and is also bordered on its north and west sides by private accommodation.