At first，the name of this University was known as "Fudan Public School", Fudan University was founded in the year 1905. "Fudan", literally meaning "heavenly light shines day after day", which indicates inexhaustible self-reliance and industriousness. The University's President is Prof. Wang Shenghong and the CPC Committee Secretary of the University is Prof. Qin Shaode.

Fudan University includes seventeen schools, which comprise sixty-six departments and four faculties : Physics, Chemistry, Macro-molecular Science, Environmental Science and Engineering. The University confers bachelor's degrees in sixty-eight academic disciplines, and master's degrees in two hundred and nine disciplines (which thirty-eight of them established by the University itself), and doctoral degrees in 22 Level I and 135 Level II academic disciplines (which 24 of them established by the University itself). There are also 29 research stations that offer postdoctoral fellowships. 

Fudan University now has an enrollment of 25,000 full-time degree candidates. Another 11,000 are studying at the Schools of Continuing Education and Online Education. Besides, the University's population of foreign students ranks second in China that has reached about 1,650 nowadays.

Fudan is a qualified faculty of over 2,300 full-time teachers and researchers, which include 1,350 professors and associate professors, twenty-five academicians of the China Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, 746 doctoral advisors, thirty-two professors and eight lecturers of the Cheung Kong Scholars Program, six chief scientists of Project 973 and thirty-one "Young and Middle-Aged Experts Nationally Acknowledged for Their Outstanding Achievements". In recent years, Fudan University has been proactive in recruiting youthful strengths and optimizing the echelon of its faculty. Fudan has nine hospital schools, notably Zhongshan (Dr. Sun Yat-sen) Hospital and Huashan (Mount Lotus) Hospital, which offer quality medical service to the general public, conduct clinical education to student doctors and perform advanced scientific researches. 

The one and only goal of Fudan University is to cultivate more and more all-round talents for modern China. Emulating the other successful institutions of tertiary and quaternary education at home and abroad, the University has been carrying out a series of daring experiments to integrate the various disciplines and to utilize the abundant resources of a comprehensive university. After years of exploring and practicing, Fudan has now established its own curriculum and management system, both of which are unique and progressively improving.

Fudan University also actively develops high-tech industries and encourages them to convert knowledge to power. Years of learning and discovering have yielded great benefits as well as profits. In return, the multi-pattern development of the high-tech industries helps the University with breathtaking efficiency to industrialize the research outcomes. Meanwhile, a group of University-sponsored enterprises is emerging, filled with passion and ambition. Fudan University has thus created its signature style of business.