Shanghai Jiaotong University is one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in China. It is a national key university directly under the Ministry of Education and jointly established by the Ministry of Education and Shanghai. It is also the first batch of national key construction universities in the "Seventh Five-Year Plan", "Eighth Five-Year Plan" and "21Project" and "985 Project". With the approval of the Ministry of Education, Shanghai Jiaotong University established the College of Online Education in July 2000, as a national modern distance education pilot university to carry out online education.

In order to build a lifelong learning system, in April 2009, Shanghai Jiaotong University merged the online education college and the adult education college into the continuing education college. The College of Continuing Education has established the Department of Online Education to continue to organize online education. Shanghai Jiaotong University decided to continue to recruit online education students for part-time unplanned colleges and high school starting colleges on October 20, and set up a second undergraduate education, which will be implemented and managed by the online education department.

Annual enrollment is divided into spring and autumn.

20 10 School of Continuing Education of Shanghai Jiaotong University began to merge adult education and distance education into continuing education. The lecturers are all teachers from Xuhui General School of Shanghai Jiaotong University, and the teaching effect is equivalent to the teaching treatment of students admitted to the national college entrance examination. At the same time, professional courses will arrange lecturers in professional fields to teach according to different majors.

In the same year, it was rated as one of the best online education platforms in the world by the American Foundation for Nature, and it was also the deputy head unit of the National Modern Distance Education Cooperation Group.