The origin of SICNU can be traced back to the National Northeastern University, which was exiled out of Northeast China after the Mukden Incident in 1931 and relocated to Santai in 1938 after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the subsequent Japanese invasion of North China.

After the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937–1945) was over, the Northeastern University moved back to its home in Shenyang, but some of its faculties and staff remained in Sichuan, and in 1946, they established Northern Sichuan Workers and Peasants College on the same Santai campus.

[3] Its library is the third largest in Sichuan Province, and it has a collection of bound volumes of 300,000 titles.

SICNU consists of 18 colleges: Chinese Language and Literature, Mathematics and Software, Continuing Education and others.

In addition, SICNU has 29 key disciplines and laboratories as well as personnel training centres.