SHNU is a comprehensive university with salient features of teacher training and a particular strength in liberal arts.

Also located in SHNU are, among others, Shanghai Teachers Training Center, Shanghai College Teachers Training Center, and the Editorial Department of Academic Abstracts of Liberal Arts of College Journals.

The school has 10 Chinese-foreign cooperatively-run degree programs supported by SHNU and universities from USA, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, and France.

SHNU includes the following colleges:[6] The university offers 88 undergraduate majors related to 11 subjects, covering Philosophy, Economics, Law, Education, Literature, History, Science, Engineering, Management Science, Agriculture and Art.

In addition, the major of Chinese Language and Literature was authorized by the Ministry of Education for talent cultivation and academic research; and the major of Literature of Ancient China serves as one of the four key bases in the country.

[8] According to an analytical report on CSSCI publishing among Chinese universities by China's Ministry of Education, SHNU ranks 28th for the total number of Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index(CSSCI) papers published in 2018.

After many years of solid work, the university has set up many subjects with their specific advantages and features.

There are influential disciplines in the academic circle such as Chinese Language and Literature, History, Philosophy, Psychology, Pedagogy, Computational Mathematics and Astrophysics; and disciplines that have attracted wide attention in the society such as Art, Advertisement, Tourism Management, MICE Economy, Rare Earth Materials, and Plant Functional Gene.

There are municipal key laboratories in the field of galaxies and cosmology, three E-research institutes of urban culture, computational science and comparative linguistics, and a large number of major subjects in the process of further development at the municipal level or under the supervision of Shanghai Education Commission.

In addition, the university has about 200 part-time employees, including five specially employed academician-level professors and 20 foreign teachers with long-term working contracts.

Statistics show that 67 research achievements by SHNU faculties won municipal or above level rewards from 2005 to 2008.

[14] With Confucius Institute as a platform, SHNU boasts its special feature and strength in international co-operation and exchanges, aiming to promote Sino-foreign trading relations and economic development through Chinese teaching and study.