Ever since its inauguration in 1971, Hong Kong Shue Yan University has been operating under the direction of the following mission statements:
● Preserve and disseminate traditional Chinese culture. ● Enable students to cultivate a whole, balanced personality including moral character and to realize their full potential as intellectuals. ● Provide rigorous intellectual training to enable students to become independent critical thinkers. ● Combine academic theory with the acquisition of professional and practical skills to produce graduates who can immediately be of service to meet the needs of the community.

Since then, the Department of Sociology has been educating students in line with the above general aims of the University.

The Department has a long track record of producing good quality graduates who are successful both in job market and in obtaining places in graduate and post-graduate degree programmes overseas and locally.
Since its inception, the Department has been responsible for offering a 4-year Honours Diploma Programme in Sociology;

Over the years, the Department has maintained a reputation for excellence in teaching as well as excellence in teacher-student relations. Whenever there are campus-wide elections for 'Ten Teachers of the Year', the Department has always enjoyed the highest concentration of awards of any department in the University.

On top of such foundation and achievements, the Department proceeded to upgrade its programme to degree status in 2005 - Bachelor of Social Sciences (Hons) in Sociology.
The degree programme that the Department now offers has successfully been accredited by the HKCAA in May and being formally approved by the Executive Council of the HKSAR Government in July in the same year.