Abstract: Professional cognition has an important and far-reaching influence on the improvement of professional learning effect, the cultivation of professional emotion, the formation of professional attitude and career development of college students. Cultivating professional cognition of students is an indispensable link in college professional education. Using CNKI as a data source database, a total of 208 articles about college students’ professional cognition from 2005 to 2019 were collected. With the method of bibliometrics, the paper analyzes the literature from perspective of quantity, source, authors, keyword, and theme. The paper reveals that the hot topics of current research mainly include the influencing factors, functions, training and promotion strategies of professional cognition, and the professional cognition of freshmen. At the same time, the result shows that the research enthusiasm is not high and lacks attention in the field of higher education. The depth and breadth of the research are insufficient, and the degree of centralization of disciplines is high. Although there is the high rate of author cooperation and a small number of scattered highly productive cooperative groups, it does not produce the positive effect of teamwork. The research method is simple and mainly consists of investigation. It proves that a real dilemma is that the status quo of professional cognition research of college students does not conform to the value and role of professional cognition.