According to the inquiry of official website of Lanzhou University, Lanzhou University is one of the national key universities directly under the Ministry of Education, with the secretary of the Party Committee and the president at the deputy ministerial level, and the vice president and the secretary of the Disciplinary Committee at the main department level.

Lanzhou University was founded on 1909. Its predecessor was the Gansu Law and Politics School established during the New Deal in the late Qing Dynasty. It has two campuses: Chengguan Campus and Yuzhong Campus.