Situated in the old capital city Nanjing, Hohai University was founded as Hohai Civil Engineering School in 1915.

Hohai University is a state key university under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education of China, and is on the State "211 Project". It is a comprehensive university with research and study of water resources as its main focus, education of engineering subjects as its first priority, and coordinated development of a wide array of disciplines, ranking among China's top universities in its teaching indexes and overall strength. Nowadays, HHU offers 72 undergraduate programs, 62 master programs, 24 PhD programs, and has 16 post-doctoral stations. The discipline of Hydraulic Engineering and Environmental Science and Engineering were selected by the State Government to be on the Double Firs-Class Program in 2017. Disciplines of Engineering, Environment/Ecology, Geoscience, Material Science, Computer Science, Chemistry, Agricultural Science, Mathematics, General Social Science and Plant & Animal Science rank top 1% on ESI, among which Engineering and Environment/Ecology rank top 1‰. The discipline of Hydraulic Engineering ranks No. 1 nationwide at the National Discipline Evaluation conducted by the Ministry of Education of China. Civil Engineering and Environmental Science & Engineering rank top 10 in China.

At present, the University has three campuses, namely the Xikang Road Campus and Jiangning Campus in Nanjing, Jintan Campus in Changzhou, with the total building area of 1,641,333 square meters. The University has more than 3,500 faculty members, serving over 55,000 students, including 22,024 undergraduate students, 19,171 master and PhD students and 1,359 international students. 

Hohai University has 31 colleges and departments in total, covering Engineering, Science, Economics, Management, Arts and Law. It has 2 research institutions at the stage-level. One is the National Key Laboratory of Water Disaster Prevention and the other is National Engineering Research Center of Water Resources Efficient Utilization and Engineering Safety. It also has 29 Provincial/Ministerial level Scientific Research Institutions, and 7 International Research Centers, including the Joint International Research Laboratory of Global Change and Water Cycle, which gathers top talents in the field of hydroscience and hydraulic engineering safety, and aims to conduct international research.

Hohai university vigorously promotes the opening up of education and carries out extensive international cooperation and exchanges with over 130 high-level universities, research institutes and international organizations across the world in the form of Academic Exchange, Joint Degree Programs, Joint College and Joint Research. Hohai University is one of the first universities receive, educate and confer degrees to international students. It has fostered thousands of talents for over 100 countries and regions. The university actively integrates into the Belt and Road Initiative, and innovates the customized mode of talent cultivation, so as to cultivate indigenized talent for Belt and Road countries.