Qufu is where Confucius was born and buried, and the university that carries the town’s name has built its identity on his legacy. Its motto comes straight from the Analects, and it runs the only complete Confucian-studies training system in China, from bachelor’s through doctoral and post-doctoral levels, in a city that has become a pilgrimage site for scholars of the classics.
The school was founded in 1955, borrowed classrooms for its first year, and grew through a 1970s merger with Shandong University’s humanities programs before taking its present name in 1985. Master’s authorization arrived in 1981, doctorates in 2003, and a second campus in Rizhao in 2002.
Eight disciplines sit in the ESI global top 1 percent, and education is the province’s leading discipline under its 811 plan. Thirteen doctoral programs and 28 master’s programs run under 11 post-doctoral stations, with 28 national first-class undergraduate programs among 86 majors, and the university placed 157th in the 2025 ShanghaiRanking.
The humanities side is anchored in the hometown advantage: a Confucian studies institute with the country’s only complete degree pipeline in the field, and the China Teachers Museum, the only museum in the country dedicated to teacher culture and professional ethics, whose new hall opened in 2023 as a provincial major education project.
Science runs on the same campus as the classics. The university’s quantum diamond technology broke an international bottleneck in materials science, its laser polarizers supported China’s Fengyun weather satellites, and its tally of Shandong natural science awards leads every provincial university in the province.
Nobel laureate Samuel C. C. Ting is honorary president, and a faculty of 2,585 includes three overseas academicians. More than 31,000 undergraduates and 7,800 postgraduates study across two campuses covering about 166 hectares, and the library holds 4.5 million volumes. Two Confucius Institutes, in Canada and South Korea, and a joint institute with Australia’s University of Newcastle carry the name abroad.
From the Analects to the laboratory, the university’s two lives feed each other: the study of how to learn, taught since Confucius, and the science of how things work, pushed forward with quantum diamonds. Old classroom and new lab share one address.
Data Source: QFNU Official Website (as of 2025)
