A Glimpse Through the Years

The College of Economics and Management is a time-honored flagship College of Shandong Agricultural University with a profound academic heritage. Back in 1906, upon the founding of Shandong Higher Agricultural School, economics courses such as Treatise on Financial Resources were launched. In 1947, a proposal was put forward to establish the Department of Agricultural Economics at Shandong Provincial College of Agriculture. In 1949, cooperative training classes and accounting classes were opened.

Following the nationwide restructuring of higher education institutions in 1952, an Agricultural Economics Teaching and Research Section was set up under the Department of Agronomy of Shandong Agricultural College. In August 1960, the Department of Agricultural Economics was founded, enrolling its first cohort of undergraduate students majoring in Agricultural Economics. After the resumption of the national college entrance examination in 1978, Shandong Agricultural College re-established the Department of Agricultural Economics and Management.

In October 1993, the department was upgraded to a College and renamed the College of Economics and Trade, offering two undergraduate majors (Agricultural Economics and Management, Accounting) and three junior college majors (Rural Finance, Township Enterprise Management, Trade Economics). In December 1999, the major of Water Engineering Economics and Finance from the former Shandong Hydraulic Engineering College was incorporated into the College.

December 2000 saw the College renamed the College of Economics and Management, with three undergraduate majors: Agricultural Economics and Management, Accounting, and Business Administration. In June 2007, the Department of Economics and Management of the former Shandong Forestry School merged into the school. The college successively added undergraduate majors including Finance, International Economics and Trade, Economics, Rural Regional Development, Marketing, and Financial Management, now boasting the largest undergraduate enrollment across the university.

In August 2018, to meet developmental needs and improve inclusiveness, the college was renamed The College of Economics and Management (Business College). In September 2020, it relocated to the northwest zone of Panhe Campus of Shandong Agricultural University, a newly built high-standard complex. In December 2025, it reverted to the official name: The College of Economics and Management.

College Overview

The College occupies the northwest zone of Panhe Campus, covering a land area of 127 mu with a total construction floor area of 97,569 square meters, capable of accommodating over 6,000 faculty and students for study, work, daily life, cultural and sports activities.A modern, intelligent and eco-friendly complex built to high standards, the zone features teaching buildings and laboratories embodying the ethos of Erudition, Deliberation, Application of Knowledge to Society, cozy dormitories fostering unity and warmth, a popular campus cafeteria with abundant delicacies and bright clean premises, sports grounds filled with youthful vitality, and picturesque landscapes with lush foliage and distant rolling hills. Exquisitely designed buildings, an elegant environment and a strong academic atmosphere define the campus.

The College currently has 132 faculty members, including 106 full-time teaching staff. Among academic faculty: 22 professors, 52 associate professors; 14 doctoral supervisors and 57 master’s supervisors. The faculty includes 11 specialists holding industrial economic posts in innovation teams of Shandong Modern Agricultural Industrial Technology System, and 2 high-end talents of Shandong Provincial Think Tank.

The College hosts a first-tier doctoral program and postdoctoral research station in Agricultural and Forestry Economics and Management. It offers three first-tier master’s programs: Agricultural and Forestry Economics and Management, Applied Economics, Business Administration; and three professional master’s programs: Master of Agriculture (MA), Master of Professional Accounting (MPAcc), Master of Finance (MF). Seven undergraduate majors are available: Agricultural and Forestry Economics and Management, Accounting, Business Administration, Finance, International Economics and Trade, Digital Economy, Financial Management. Among them, Agricultural and Forestry Economics and Management is a national first-class undergraduate major under construction, while Finance and Accounting are provincial first-class undergraduate majors under construction.

The College runs an Experimental Teaching Center for Economics and Management and interdisciplinary innovation platforms, comprising 11 functional laboratories: Virtual Simulation Lab, Digital Economy Lab, FinTech Lab, Intelligent Accounting Lab, ERP Intelligent Sand Table Lab, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab, Economic Analysis Lab, etc. Over 50 sets of teaching and quantitative analysis software are deployed, with hardware and software facilities valued at approximately 19 million RMB. The College establishes 7 new off-campus teaching, research and practical education bases annually. Among them, the Tai’an Jiunüfeng Rural Revitalization Demonstration Zone Internship & Training Base was honored as one of Shandong’s first batch of provincial model internship and training bases.

The College operates multiple provincial-level research and think tank platforms: Shandong Research Center for Three Rural Issues Provincial Conditions, Shandong Key Research Base for Social Sciences and Theories (Shandong Rural Revitalization Research Base), Shandong Research Center for Agricultural Resources and Ecological Security, etc. Annual research funding from vertical government projects and horizontal social services exceeds 5 million RMB. A number of research outputs rank among the nation’s leading counterparts, and 25 think tank reports have received positive written instructions from more than ten successive provincial and ministerial leaders.

In Full Bloom

Centered on the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education, the College implements a mechanism featuring systematic design, regular implementation and institutional guarantees. It steadily advances undergraduate teaching across multiple chains and links, proactively aligns with local economic and social demands, leverages its distinctive strengths, and builds a collaborative talent cultivation system integrating major studies, minor studies and micro-majors. It strictly enforces classroom teaching norms for instructors and mandatory class observation for new young teachers, and develops a team-based, digitalized and top-tier curriculum system. Around 190 undergraduate courses are offered each year. Seven courses including Marketing have been approved as national or provincial first-class undergraduate courses; two provincial model courses integrating ideological and political education into curriculum, and one of the first batch of provincial smart courses. The College has won more than 10 teaching awards including the First Prize in the National University Teacher Teaching Innovation Competition, with over 30 outstanding undergraduate graduation theses recognized at university level every year.

The College enrolls roughly 4,300 undergraduates, drawing students from 23 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities nationwide. Based on its unique strengths, it builds a multi-dimensional system for moral education. Centered on students, it creates an all-round collaborative education circle consisting of counselors, class teachers, academic supervisors, innovation & entrepreneurship tutors and administrative service staff.

Tailored to students’ growth trajectories, it deepens academic atmosphere development via a characteristic model combining Three Ethic Construction and high-quality campus events, and systematically advances three key programs: academic planning, student peer mentoring and class cohesion. It has received over 100 collective honors including the Red Flag Communist Youth League Committee, Advanced Unit for Academic Atmosphere Construction, Advanced Unit for Enrollment and Employment, and Excellent Organization for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Committed to students’ all-round development and entrepreneurship competence cultivation, the College has fostered nearly 600 student startup teams. Students win over 200 provincial-level or higher awards annually, covering more than 800 participants. In 2025, our student team claimed the Special Prize in the 19th National Challenge Cup Competition, marking a historic breakthrough for the university in this event. For years running, the graduate employment rate has remained above 85%, and the further study rate over 25%.

The College recruited its first cohort of master’s students in 1987 and obtained the approval for first-tier doctoral program in 1998. At present, it hosts 600 doctoral and master’s candidates. Focused on improving independent talent cultivation quality, it has built a full-chain management mechanism covering admission, training, degree conferral and career placement, forming an integrated industry-university-research training system. It continuously optimizes postgraduate training regulations, standardizes training procedures, innovates evaluation criteria for degree outputs, and balances theoretical instruction with practical training. Full-process quality control is enforced for dissertations, including topic demonstration, proposal defense, mid-term inspection, pre-defense, blind peer review and final defense. More than 80 master’s and doctoral dissertations have won Shandong Provincial Outstanding Thesis Awards, 11 students received Shandong Provincial Award for Innovative Postgraduates, and over 200 case studies have been included in the case databases of Tsinghua University and Peking University.

Upholding the disciplinary development philosophy of pooling resources and consolidating joint efforts, the College strengthens interdisciplinary cohesion, optimizes academic teams and platforms, and develops a multi-disciplinary integrated system anchored on Agricultural and Forestry Economics and Management. Six research teams have been established covering rural finance, industrial organization, food security, agriculture-related finance, agricultural resources and environment, and digital economy, with 14 defined research directions. In recent years, four provincial-level platforms have been approved: Shandong Research Center for Three Rural Issues Provincial Conditions, Key Research Base for Rural Economic Management, Shandong Research Center for Agricultural Resources and Ecological Security, and Shandong Key Research Base for Social Sciences and Theories (Shandong Rural Revitalization Research Base). Two university-level centers have been founded: the Research Center for Rural Economy, Society and Culture, and the Agricultural Brand Research Center. Two College-level platforms (Case Education & Research Center, Rural Development Research Center) and one industry platform (Tai’an Agricultural Risk Mitigation Research Center) have also been set up. A four-in-one research framework centered on comprehensive rural revitalization with coordinated industry-university-teaching functions has taken shape, steadily lifting overall research capacity and disciplinary influence.

Following the talent development strategy of strengthening superior disciplines, addressing weaknesses and pursuing balanced growth, the College reorganizes academic teams to build a well-structured faculty cohort. Faculty under 45 account for 50% of total staff, and 51% hold educational backgrounds from Double First-Class universities or overseas study experience. A sustainable mentorship ecosystem connecting senior and junior faculty has taken shape, with a large group of responsible young backbones emerging as core drivers of College development.

In recent years, 8 faculty members have been awarded provincial talent and team titles including Shandong Taishan Scholars, High-End Think Tank Talents, and Leading Talents under the Philosophy and Social Sciences 111 Program; 11 specialists hold industrial posts in Shandong Modern Agricultural Industrial Technology System Innovation Teams. The College implements a dual-track talent development plan of external overseas exchange and internal on-campus training. Twenty-two faculty members have been sent for academic visits to the United States, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom and other countries. Regular academic events including Academic Week and Academic Tea Talks, alongside recreational activities such as Spring Festival galas, create a supportive environment for faculty communication and professional growth.

Aligned with the university’s overall development strategy, the College advances organized research guided by the principle of bolstering strengths, remedying shortcomings and tackling bottlenecks. It upgrades research hardware and software, refines incentive policies and recognition criteria for high-level research outputs, and cultivates a vibrant research culture. To date, faculty have secured 14 National Natural Science Foundation projects, 22 National Social Science Foundation projects, 14 Ministry of Education Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation projects, and 116 provincial and ministerial research projects, with cumulative funding exceeding 30 million RMB. Over 2,780 research papers have been published, including more than 660 in top journals such as Management World, Issues in Agricultural Economy, Chinese Rural Economy, and China Rural Survey. Thirty-eight theoretical articles have appeared in mainstream newspapers including Guangming Daily, Dazhong Daily and Economic Daily, alongside over 40 monographs. In terms of research awards, the College has received 1 First Prize, 6 Second Prizes and 7 Third Prizes of Shandong Provincial Outstanding Social Science Achievements. Twenty-three faculty are listed among the world’s Top 1% or Top 5% Highly Cited Researchers, demonstrating the College’s prominent academic reputation and influence.

The College actively promotes domestic and international exchanges, signing cooperative education agreements with institutions including I-Shou University (Taiwan), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), Faculty of Agriculture, University of Alberta (Canada), FOM University of Applied Sciences and Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany). Focused on serving comprehensive rural revitalization and supporting the construction of Shandong Rural Revitalization Model, the College organizes faculty and students to engage in social services and accelerate research commercialization via diverse channels. It has undertaken over 50 large-scale social surveys including evaluations of new agricultural business entities in Shandong, policy assessments commissioned by the CPC Shandong Provincial Committee, targeted poverty alleviation effect evaluations, and agricultural insurance performance reviews. More than 30 planning projects for agricultural parks, industrial development and rural revitalization at municipal and prefectural levels have been completed. Six national and provincial Science and Technology Backyards covering chestnut, waxy wheat, black donkey, live pig, edible fungi and other industries have been established. Faculty and students actively participate in major research campaigns such as Ten Thousand Students Link Ten Thousand Villages: Contribute to Hometown Development and the construction of Rural Revitalization Service Stations.

Forging Ahead Toward Distant Horizons

After years of development, the College has established a student training mechanism of chain-based management and categorized targeted strategies; formed an education pattern integrating farming practice and academic pursuit with diversified openness; built a research and innovation system powered by team collaboration and platform support; defined its social service mission rooted in Shandong and dedicated to the Three Rural Issues; and adopted a cooperation and exchange philosophy of industry-education integration and open coordination. Leveraging disciplinary strengths in talent cultivation, it has yielded fruitful results in teaching, entrepreneurship practice, social service, research innovation and international cooperation.

Carrying forward past achievements and embarking on a new grand journey, standing at the forefront of agricultural and rural modernization, the College will remain committed to fostering virtue through education, cultivating talents for the Party and the nation, and deeply align its development with national strategies including rural revitalization, ecological civilization and cultural confidence.

It will drive the transformation of teaching from traditional economics and management to digital economics and management, advance disciplinary development from quantitative expansion to quality upgrading, and shift research orientation from discipline-driven to problem-driven. Rooted firmly in agriculture, the College will wholeheartedly serve agricultural development. With perseverance akin to refining a sword over a decade, it strives to build a domestically first-class and internationally renowned College of Economics and Management.