Founded in November 1999, the School of Philosophy and Social Development, Shandong University, was developed from the merger of the original department of philosophy and the department of sociology. The school now grants M.A. degrees in eight faculties, namely Chinese Philosophy, Foreign Philosophy, Marxist Philosophy, Study of Religion, Philosophy of Science and Technology, Ethics, Sociology, Social Security; and Ph. D. degrees in five facultes, namely Chinese Philosophy, Foreign Philosophy, Marxist Philosophy, Study of Religion, Philosophy of Science and Technology. The school is qualified to grant Ph. D. degrees in philosophy of first-class course, and has its postdoctoral research center. Besides, the school has two key research centers of social science under the Ministry of Education: the Center for Zhouyi and Ancient Chinese Philosophy and the Study of Judaism and multi-religions. The school also has many research institutes such as the Research Center for Hermeneutics, Center for the study Confucianism, Social Development Research Institute, Community Research Institute, etc. 
      The philosophy faculty began to enroll M.A. students in 1979, and Ph. D. students in 1998. It features in the studies of Yi-ology, Confucianism, Chinese and foreign comparative philosophy, western philosophy, Judaism philosophy, theory of social development, all of which have certain influences and positions in the area. Many researches have reached the academic frontier, filling up the vacancies of the area and serving as an influential force in the academic area both at home and abroad, and have won considerable attention and praise. Among them, foreign philosophy faculty has been rated into the “Mount Tai Scholar” research program. 
      The religion faculty started its enrollment of M.A. students in 2002. Its research objects are the learning of the basic religious theories and the research into the theories of religion both at home and abroad. The guiding principle is to lead the students’ correct faith and to cultivate qualified religious researchers and administrative talents with extensive knowledge of literature, history and philosophy. It aims at making the researches on Judaism, Christology，Buddhism and Taoism unique in the academic area. 
       Sociology faculty is among the first batch of sociology disciplines ratified by the Ministry of Education after the resumption of the sociology as a subject. The faculty started in 1983, formally established as a department in 1986 and the enrollment of M.A. student began at 1993. So far it has been built into a social applied faculty with broad development space and great features in the areas such as the theory of sociology, social psychology, community theory, social security, and sociological investigation and research methods. 
      The Social Security Department enrolled M.A. students from the year 2004 on. It is a new faculty set for the purpose of acclimatizing ourselves into international practice. The department is committed to the research on the area of social security, social welfare and the training of compound administrative talents for governments and related organizations.
      The School of Philosophy and Social Development has a postgraduate supervisors team with high level educations, reasonable age structure and innovative spirits. The present faculty includes 20 Ph.D. supervisors both full-time and part-time (including 2 foreign supervisors), and 43 M.A. supervisors. With young and middle aged scholars as the main body, the strong academic echelon is exerting great influences both at home and abroad. The school now has 237graduates in school, and 538 students have graduated. After entering the society, the graduated students have been widely acclaimed by the employing unites. A large number of them have taken the teaching and leading post in all walks of life, many of whom have become the backbones of their unites. They have made due contribution to the motherland in their respective posts and continue to play their roles. 
      The school has excellent conditions and facilitates for teaching and doing researches, such as reference rooms, computer rooms, laboratories, and multimedia rooms. The reference room has a store of more then 10 million volumes of books written either in Chinese or English and 265 kinds of academic journals, which would better serve the graduates in their studying and doing researches. 
       In order to enhance the overall quality of the graduates, their competitiveness and scientific research abilities, Shandong University requires every student to have the “Three Kinds of Experiences”. In recent years, the School of Philosophy and Social Development put more efforts on strengthening the horizontal ties with other institutes, the program of which is called “step out, invite in”. The school has successively established close cooperative relationship with the Philosophy School of the Chinese Academy of Social Science, the Religion Graduate School, Peking University, Renmin University of China, and other renowned academic institutions and universities. The school has also established exchanges and cooperation with the academic institutes and universities from other countries or regions, such as Great Britain, U.S.A, Canada, Israel, Korea, Switzerland, Hong Kong , Tai Wan and so on. Quite a number of M.A. and Ph.D. students have been sent abroad for studies and doing research. Strong academic atmosphere and opening space for education in the school have created a first-class studying and research environment for the development of graduate students.