China is a country that attaches great importance to education.
So, what was the first state-run university in China?
Seeing the above picture, people thought that the first government-run school in China was Beiyang University.
The founder of this school is Sheng Xuanhuai.
People familiar with the history of the Qing Dynasty know this person, he was a government-run businessman, comprador, representative figure of the Western affairs faction in the late Qing Dynasty, a famous politician, entrepreneur and philanthropist, known as "the father of Chinese industry", "the father of Chinese business", "the father of Chinese higher education".
This man created 11 "China's firsts": the first civil joint-stock enterprise steamship Merchants Bureau; the first telegraph bureau, the China Telegraph General Bureau; the first inland small steamship company; the first bank China Commerce and Commerce Bank; the first railway trunk line Beijing-Han railway; the first steel joint venture Hanyeping Company; the first higher normal school Nanyang Public School (now Jiaotong University); the first mining company; the first public library; the first modern university Beiyang University Hall; and the founding of the Chinese Red Cross Society.
In the last years of the Qing Dynasty, there were two very powerful merchants.
In addition to Sheng Xuanhuai, there was also Hu Xueyan. Hu Xueyan relied on Zuo Zongtang, while Sheng Xuanhuai relied on Li Hongzhang. Zuo Zongtang was upright and regained Xinjiang, but Li Hongzhang was different, good at monopoly, and the officials worshiped Yipin. In the end, in the battle between Zuo Zongtang and Li Hongzhang, Li Hongzhang won, so Hu Xueyan, like Zuo Zongtang, soon collapsed in the commercial empire, while Sheng Xuanhuai was not, and with Li Hongzhang's victory, the trading became bigger and bigger.
However, Sheng Xuanhuai was a patriotic businessman, and he realized that at that time, China lacked the most new talents who understood technology, foreign languages, and management, and could only read the history of the scriptures and write the eight strands of pedantry, which was of little use in the cause of foreign affairs, and traditional education had to be innovated. So he decided to start cultivating new talents, and initially he set up a number of technical training courses affiliated with enterprises, and in a short period of time, he trained some technicians with medium technical level. However, these schools only emphasize practicality in terms of academic system and curriculum, and the theory and basic knowledge are not solid enough. With the continuous improvement of the demand for talents, in the early 1890s, Sheng Xuanhuai began to propose to run a regular school to cultivate high-level professionals. On October 2, 1895, the Tianjin Beiyang Western School, approved by the Guangxu Emperor and appointed by Sheng Xuanhuai as the first superintendent of the school, was officially established.
Sheng Xuanhuai has his own insight into new-style education. He set strict rules for the students of the Tianjin Beiyang Western Learning Academy, the most obvious of which is that the students must be carefully drilled into their own professions, not have distractions, be gradual and gradual, and not tolerate disorder.
He did not approve of the students simply learning foreign languages, believing that foreign languages were just a tool, and that students should combine their own specialties to learn foreign languages, which was a requirement he made due to the lack of high-tech talents in China, which proved to be very reasonable.
The school underwent several changes and eventually became the Tianjin University it is today. Today, Tianjin University is in the upstream of the 985 industry, covering a total area of 1.362 million square meters, with 38,158 full-time students, 27 colleges (departments), 75 undergraduate majors, 42 first-level discipline master's programs, 30 first-level discipline doctoral programs, and 25 postdoctoral research mobile stations.
Beiyang University, founded by Sheng Xuanhuai, kicked off The Prelude to China's State-Run Universities.
In 1896, the second year of Sheng Xuanhuai's founding of Beiyang University, he founded Nanyang Public School in Shanghai. This school later became today Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Xi'an Jiao Tong University. In July 1898, the predecessor of Peking University, Beijing Normal University, was also officially established. 【Author:Daily Kanji】