Following the post-war educational reform, it merged with three pre-war higher schools, reorganizing as a comprehensive university with five faculties: science, medicine, letters, law and economics, and engineering.

Numerous prominent scholars and scientists have attended or worked at Osaka University, such as Nobel Laureate in Physics Hideki Yukawa, manga artist Osamu Tezuka, Lasker Award winner Hidesaburō Hanafusa, author Ryōtarō Shiba, and discoverer of regulatory T cells Shimon Sakaguchi.

The spirit of the university's humanities programmes is believed to be intimately rooted in the history of the Kaitokudō, whereas that of the natural and applied sciences is based upon the traditions of the Tekijuku.

After merging with Naniwa High School and Osaka High School as a result of the government's education system reform in 1949, Osaka University started its postwar era with five faculties: Science, Medicine, Engineering, Letters, and Law.

Built on the then-existing faculties, ten graduate schools were set up as part of the government's education system reform program in 1953.

It is also the academic base for Graduate Schools of International Public Policy, Language and Culture, a portion of Information Science, and the Center for the Practice of Legal and Political Expertise.

Sports activities are primarily concentrated on the Toyonaka campus, with the exception of tennis, which is located in Suita.

The Minoh campus was incorporated following the merger with the Osaka University of Foreign Studies in October 2007.

[10] Osaka University maintains four overseas Centers for Education and Research, in San Francisco, Groningen, Bangkok, and Shanghai.

Osaka University's School of Human Sciences on the Suita Campus hosts an English-medium four-year undergraduate degree program.

The degree programme is based on international benchmarking standards, has competitive entry requirements and attracts students from all over the world.

The current director of this programme is Beverley Yamamoto, who leads a UNESCO Chair in Global Health and Education.

Allied institutions in the United Kingdom include the University of Oxford (1997) and the Imperial College London (2006).

[25] In the Nature index 2024 annual table, Osaka University was ranked 34th globally for its output in selected journals in the fields of natural sciences and Health Sciences research, among all leading research institutions in the world (3rd in Japan).