Established in 1995, the College merged with its counterpart at Hualien University of Education in 2008, and is currently housed in Humanities Buildings I, II and III, the Shoufeng campus.

The College consists of 10 departments: Sinophone Literatures, Chinese Language and Literature, English, History, Taiwan and Regional Studies, Economics, Counseling & Clinical Psychology, Sociology, Public Administration, Financial and Economic Law, along with five research centers: Digital Culture, European Union, Humanities Innovation & Social Practice, and Pop History.

The College's teaching objectives revolve around the following:
(1) equipping young talents with professional expertise, originality and humanistic qualities
(2) imbuing students with fundamental knowledge of humanities and social sciences
(3) preparing practitioners of tomorrow with aptitude for creative ventures, including eloquent verbal skill and critical thinking capacity
(4) cultivating responsible citizens who in their social engagements support democracy well-guarded by law

Vigorously promoting intercultural exchange, the College runs short-term (semester long, year long) and long-term (joint degree) exchange programs in corporation with an increasing number of universities in China and abroad, including School of Government at Peking University, School of Economics and History College at Nan Kai University, Law School at Tianjin University, Faculty of Chinese Language & Culture at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (China), Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Southern University College (Malaysia), Faculty of Economics & Social Sciences at the University of Lodz (Poland), and Undergraduate Faculty of Social Studies at Hiroshima University (Japan).

As a research institution, the College benefits from the joint forces of humanities and social sciences. As the ultimate home and hub for creative activities and social practices in eastern Taiwan, students and faculty members at the College have been actively participating in industry-university collaboration projects on all levels. For years, the College has been the host for conferences on Hualien Studies; we also helped generate series of multi-million projects to promote sixth industries, and digital education at Eastern Taiwan. In the field of social sciences, in 2017 and 2018, NDHU is ranked in the top 1% globally by ESI.