Most of its faculty members, students and library collections were transferred to East China Normal University.

[1] During the early period of St. John's College, Lydia Mary Fay (1804–78), a missionary of the Protestant Episcopal China Mission (or the American Church Mission), helped to set up Duane Hall, a secondary school which later became part of St. John's College.

The university was located at 188 Jessfield Road (now Wanhangdu Lu), on a bend of the Suzhou Creek in Shanghai and was designed to incorporate Chinese and Western architectural elements.

However, in 1952 the Communist government adopted a policy of creating specialist universities in the Soviet style of the time.

To keep the school's traditions alive, SJU alumni (called Johanneans) have founded three academic institutions bearing the same name: