Northeast Normal University (NENU) is a key teacher training university directly under the administration of the Ministry of Education, a national "double first-class" construction university, a national "211 project" key construction university, a national teacher education "985" superior discipline innovation platform construction university. In June 2004, the Ministry of Education approved for NENU’s application of establishing a Graduate School. In September 2017, it was selected as one of the first batch of national "double first-class" construction universities.

NENU has 23 first-level disciplines for doctoral degree granting, 4 professional doctoral degree authorization categories, 34 first-level disciplines for master degree granting, 25 professional master degree authorization categories, and its system of discipline covers 12 disciplines except medicine and military science. NENU has 6 national "double first-class" construction disciplines, 5 national key disciplines, and 34 high-level disciplines with distinctive features in Jilin Province.

At present, there are 18,333 postgraduates in NENU, including 12,252 full-time postgraduates, 2,614 doctoral students and 9,638 master students (including 4,630 professional degree master students); 6,081 part-time postgraduates, including 531 part-time doctoral students, 5,550 part-time master students (946 part-time master students and 4604 masters of education for publicly-funded normal university students. Since 2000, NENU has conferred more than 65,982 master degrees and 5768 doctoral degrees, and cultivated a number of high-level, top-notch and innovative talents who have made outstanding contributions to the development of education, politics, economy and society.

Dedicated to cultivating students with moral integrity, satisfying social needs, improving quality and pursuing excellence, NENU actively puts into practice the philosophy of "education of respect, education of creativity", pushes forward the comprehensive reform of postgraduate cultivation, constantly revises and improves the cultivation programs for doctoral and master students, and implements the cultivation modes of integration between science and education and integration between enterprises and universities, based on the characteristics of individual disciplines. NENU continues to optimize teaching content, reform teaching methods, highlight the task-driven, problem-oriented and process-oriented education, explore the new form of teaching based on the "question-driven" postgraduate courses, and strengthen the cultivation of students' knowledge integration ability, innovation ability and reflection ability.NENU deepens the implementation of the trinity structure of new PI (Principal Investigator) system, and implements the collective guidance system of supervisors centered on discipline teams. NENU has implemented the integrated training of bachelor, master and doctoral degrees, set up innovative programs for graduate education, and created high-end academic brands such as "Summer School for Graduate Students" and "Academic Forum for Doctoral Students". In recent years, NENU has won many awards in the contests such as the National Graduate Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition and the National Teachers' Skills Competition. NENU has won national teaching achievement awards for its achievements in postgraduate teaching reforms for many times.

Oriented to cultivating top-notch innovative talents, satisfying national and regional needs, and competing for a world-class normal university, NENU insists on promoting reforms in quality, efficiency and motivation, vigorously strengthens high-quality construction, optimizes and restructures disciplines, follows the basic laws of disciplinary development and graduate education.NENU aims at promoting the cultivation between disciplines, the reform in student training mode, optimize and reconstruct the curriculum system, strengthen quality management in the whole process, deepen the reform of the evaluation system, endeavor to build the postgraduate cultivation system with higher quality, profound achievements, better structure and advantages fully displayed, and comprehensively improve the ability of independent cultivation of talents so that the students are well qualified in morality and ability, courageous to innovate, down to earth and responsible, and capable of leading future development of the new era with an international vision.