The College of Transport and Communications grew out of the Maritime Management Department and the International Shipping Department, being one of the earliest founded colleges specializing in transport management (maritime management). The rich experience it accumulates in talent nurturing and academic research during the last 50 years has enabled it to develop into one major base for the teaching and research of the discipline of transport and communications (Maritime Management) in China. The College of Transport and Communications is officially established in 2003 for the purpose of meeting Shanghai’s increasing demand for maritime talent to become one international shipping center.

The college boasts a well-structured and academically sound faculty which is constituted by 50 lectures, 10 professors (6 PHD tutors) and 17 associate professors. Among the lecturers, 25 of them have been awarded PHD degree and 11 of them are PHD candidates, accounting for 74% for the total lecturers.

The college provides a complete discipline system and is able to foster talents of all levels. Its speciality of Transport Planning and Management is approved successively by the Education Ministry of China and Shanghai Municipal Education Commission as the National Key Discipline and Shanghai Municipal Education Commission Key Discipline. The college now is entitled to award PHD degrees in the discipline of Transport Planning and Management and having more than 20 PHD candidates studying on campus. The college is running two master-level programs, namely Transport Engineering and Transport Planning and Management and two master-level international cooperation programs, International Transport and Logistics and Logistics Management and Engineering, with the total number of master candidates reaches 500. The four bachelor level specialities, Transportation, International Shipping Management, Logistics Management and Transport Engineering, attract more than 2,000 students. The bachelor level specialities of Transport and International Shipping Management, which Shanghai Maritime University features, were chosen by Shanghai Municipal as key specialities as early as 1986. All bachelor level programs except Transport Engineering have been admitting high school graduates according to first class universities admission standards and are well recognized in the society.

The College of Transport and Communications attaches great importance to putting theory into practice and to the maintaining of its cooperation with maritime community. Great efforts have been made to carry out scientific research and to establish practice bases such as digital logistics laboratory center and virtual laboratory. The annual research fund amounts to 6 million. The college has started its cooperation with UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in running master level seminars as early as 1983. In recent years, it has started other master level programs in collaboration with World Maritime University and the University of Western Australia and has founded an exchange mechanism with The Hong Kong Polytechnic University to enforce the communication of scholars and students from the two universities.