Founded in 1952, Inner Mongolia Normal University is one of the key universities in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Praised as "the cradle of ethnic education", it is a comprehensive normal university with characteristic features of both teacher and ethnic education.

IMNU has 22 functional departments, 29 colleges, one independent college and two teaching and research departments. There are 1900 staff members, including 1,300 full-time teachers, of whom 70 percent have a PhD or master's degree and 45 percent  are associate or full professors. The university has 754 doctoral and master's program supervisors.

There are about 24,000 undergraduate and full-time diploma students, 4,200 graduate students, 6,000 continuing students and 200 international students, making up a multilevel educational framework. The university offers 79 undergraduate programs in 10 disciplines. It has two first-grade-discipline doctoral programs, four second-grade-discipline doctoral programs, one mobile post-doctoral research station, 24 first-grade-discipline master's programs, 131 second-grade-discipline master's programs and 10 professional master's programs.

In addition to cooperating with famous universities and research institutes at home, IMNU connects to the world and has established partnerships with universities and research institutes in Mongolia, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Italy, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.