The admission and cultivation of international students in Shandong University can be traced back to the 1950s. Shandong University was one of the first Chinese universities accepting international students and offering Chinese courses to them. It has been one of the major universities in China engaging in international students' education since the 1980s. It has been designated by China 's Ministry of Education as “a key university supporting the Chinese language teaching in neighboring countries”, and was among the first universities in China to have established overseas colleges of Confucianism.

In 1994, the College of International Education of Shandong University was established. It is a comprehensive educational institution mainly responsible for the admission, teaching, management of and service for the international students. The college, with many talented and experienced teachers and fine teaching facilities, now enrolls students for studies in linguistics and applied linguistics for master's degree, and students for studies in pedagogy (second language teaching) for double bachelor's degree. It also undertakes such programs as training Chinese teachers for overseas schools and institutions.

In addition, Shandong University is designated by the state to be a center for HSK (Chinese proficiency test) and a center for “appraising the competence of teaching Chinese as a second language”