The first teacher training center in Malaya was originally located in Taiping and was known as the Matang Teacher Training College. Opened in 1913, the house of the Malay noble of Taiping, Ngah Ibrahim served as the first teacher training college in Malaya until it was shifted to Tanjung Malim nine years later and given the name of the Sultan of Perak at that time. The history of UPSI as we know it today dates to 1922 when the university was then known as the Sultan Idris Training College. It was set mooted by the then deputy director of Malay schools, R.O. Winstedt as a training college for Malay teachers. Named after the late Sultan Idris Murshidul Azam Shah, the 28th Sultan of Perak, the college was opened on 29 November 1922 by the chief secretary of the Federated Malay States, Sir George Maxwell. The initial instructional regime required students to complete a three-year course of training where traditional skills and arithmetic were taught. With the adoption of the Education Ordinance 1957 based on the recommendations of the 1956 Education Committee Report, the training course was extended to five years and new subjects were introduced. SITC also came to be officially known by its Malay name, Maktab Perguruan Sultan Idris or MPSI. In 1976, MPSI became co-educational with the admission of the first batch of 150 female students. In 1987, MPSI was upgraded and renamed Institut Perguruan Sultan Idris or IPSI and new courses were made available leading to a degree conferred by Universiti Pertanian Malaysia. IPSI was upgraded to a full university bearing its current name on 1 May 1997 in line with the plans by Malaysia to increase the number of graduate teachers in primary and secondary schools.
Campus
UPSI has two campuses namely the Sultan Abdul Jalil Shah Campus and the Sultan Azlan Shah Campus who are in the leadership of education based on the glorious history and leading the global change. The main campus is on a 300-acre site in the town of Tanjung Malim that straddles both the Perak and Selangor state border. A new campus is on an site in the new township of Proton City, 5 kilometres from the current campus.
Faculty
Total of nine faculty has been established namely:
