The School of Economics is one of the top economic schools in China. It has a long history. It originated from the teaching and research section on Marxism-Leninism founded in 1954, one year after the former Huazhong Institute of Technology was established.

In 1955, the teaching and research section on Political Economics was founded.

The former Huazhong Institute of Technology established the economic research institute in 1981, and the Department of Economics and Management Engineering in 1983.

In 1985, the Department of Economics and Management Engineering was enlarged and rebuilt as School of Economics and Management including Department of Management Engineering, Department of Economics and Department of Sociology.

In 1988, the former Huazhong University of Science and Technology established the Research Centre on Economic Development.

In 1994, the School of Economics and Management was split into School of Management and the School of Economics. The School of Economics was composed of the former Department of the former Department of Economics, Quantitative Economics and the Economic Development Research Center.

In 2000, Huazhong University of Science and Technology was founded as a result of the merger of the former Huazhong University of Science and Technology, the former Tongji Medical University, the former Wuhan Urban Construction Institute, and the former Wuhan Science and Technology Vocational College on May 26th, 2000. The School of Economics was given the new name since then.

The School of Economics has taken "Virtue, Erudition, Statecraft，Benefiting the People" as its mission, implementing the educational idea that education should be geared to the needs of the world, of the future, and of modernization. The School has adopted the training pattern with broad scope, solid foundation, practice-and-innovation orientation, devoting to educate elites in government, businesses and research institutes.