Another 100-year school history is a fake school introduction
The most profound of Chinese universities may be only the school history. Zhejiang University, Wuhan University, Southeast University, Nanjing Normal University and other famous schools in order to tamper with and prolong the history of the school, do not hesitate to go around recognizing their ancestors, and appropriating other people's history as their own.
In 2002, Jiangnan University in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province, ushered in its own "centennial", the light industry as the characteristics of the country's "211 project" key construction university, was founded only a full year.
Of course, Jiangnan University is not the only one to celebrate its centennial this year. Nanjing University, Southeast University, Nanjing Normal University, Hohai University, Nanjing University of Technology, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing Forestry University, Jiangsu University***nine universities held a joint celebration to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the establishment of a school called "Sanjiang Normal School".
This is called "Jiangsu nine colleges and universities centennial joint celebration" of the activities, at the time attracted great attention, several important national leaders have sent letters of congratulations. Since then, the centennial history has become a nail in the coffin, so much so that you can see on the official websites and encyclopedias of these nine universities that they all put their founding date in 1902 - when the Sanjiang Normal School was founded. Most of them, though, were only formed in the 1952 faculty restructuring.
But if we go back to 1982, no one dares to imagine that they will be able to hold their centennial celebrations 20 years later, except for Nanjing University, some of which did not even exist 20 years ago. But in China, where it takes 20 years to rewrite history, sometimes a school celebration can extend a school's history by decades.
We're too young for a new predecessor
In 1982, the Nanjing Institute of Technology, a newly established institution during the 1952 faculty restructuring, held its own 30th anniversary celebration, one of the four famous engineering schools of the time. That year, dozens of schools across the country celebrated their 30th anniversaries. Most of them were specialized colleges of science and technology, literature and history, etc., and they all came from the national faculty restructuring in 1952. The Ministry of Education has also stepped in to ask that school celebrations be kept simple, as they can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars.
In October 1982, the Ministry of Education issued a notice on the immediate curbing of school celebrations / People's Education
The result was that five years later, the Nanjing Institute of Technology once again held a school celebration. This time, however, they celebrated their 83rd anniversary, extending the school's history by almost 50 years. Although the school had previously claimed that its history could be traced back to the Jiangnan Higher Industrial College, which was founded in 1904, at that time it was simply referred to as "school history".
That's not all. A year later, in 1988, the Nanjing Institute of Technology celebrated its 86th anniversary, once again extending its history and announcing its name change to Southeast University. Southeast University, a name that had existed from 1921-1927, was a national university founded on the basis of the Nanjing Higher Normal. Since then, the new Southeast University has appropriated the history of the Nanjing Higher Normal School as its own.
Southeast University, in order to extend the history of the university, mercilessly abandoned its original "predecessor" Jiangnan Higher Industrial College, replaced by the Sanjiang Normal College. In today's official website of Southeast University, you can no longer find any trace of Jiangnan Higher Industrial College, even though for more than 30 years it was officially recognized as the "predecessor".
In 2017, Southeast University successfully rebranded and celebrated the 115th anniversary of its founding / Southeast University official website
Chinese colleges and universities are all too young. Basically, not many of them are able to meet the Ministry of Education's "long history" requirement to hold a school celebration. But a different predecessor would have been a completely different story. Soochow University, which has never held a large-scale celebration before, went for a centennial celebration, tracing its history back to 1901, when Soochow University was founded. This is despite the fact that until then, Soochow University's predecessor was only thought to be the newly established Jiangsu Normal College.
In addition to working on the "predecessor," Chinese universities are also trying to extend their histories by referring to the date of their founding as the date of their founding. Jiangnan University, which has almost become a laughingstock for outsiders in the matter of school celebrations, took 1958, the year of the founding of the Wuxi Institute of Light Industry, as the starting year of the school celebrations, while 1902 was the year of the school. But even more dishonest is the Nanjing Normal University, although it is also a reorganization of faculties and departments of the formation of the school, but they still set the "founding" time in 1902.
September 9, 2012, Nanjing Normal University. Students may have thought their school was founded 110 years ago / Visual China
The ambiguity of the term has given many schools a chance to capitalize on the fact that most of the schools that have celebrated their centennials since the 1990s have done so in the same way. Regardless of the year in which they were reorganized and merged, as long as they can trace their earliest year of operation, they will put the 100th anniversary of their founding on their school celebrations.
Schools that have developed independently from a particular faculty will also take the date of the establishment of the faculty (that is, the date of the "school") as the time of the founding of the school, and then continue to celebrate the centennial of the school with great fanfare. Therefore, this year's 100th anniversary celebration of the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, founded in 1921, not the establishment of the Shanghai University of Commerce, but the establishment of the Nanjing Higher Division of Commerce in 1917.
In order to be more convincing, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics celebration also used old photos / Shanghai University of Finance and Economics official website
School building, extend the school history of the necessary killers
In fact, even those who are famous for the "hundred years old school", the history of the school can not be detailed check. Look at the history of Nanjing University's name change can be found, from the two rivers Normal School (1906-1911) to the Nanjing Higher Normal School (1914-1921), there is a three-year gap in the middle.
The year 1911 was the time when the Xinhai Revolution broke out. After the Wuchang Uprising, the Two Rivers Normal School was discontinued due to the war, and the original school building was used as a military warehouse until 1914, when Jiangsu Province decided to borrow the original site to establish the Nanjing Higher Normal School. The only relationship between the newly established school and the original Liangjiang Normal School was the school building.
Zhejiang University, which recently celebrated its 120th anniversary and turned on its lights around the world (also known as "the world's square dance"), traces its roots back to the Seekers College, founded in 1897. That school was ordered to stop enrolling students in 1912, and when the last class graduated in 1914, the Seekers' College ceased operating altogether.
Today's Zhejiang University was renamed from Sun Yat-sen University No. 3, which was founded in 1927. 1940 saw the 13th anniversary of the founding of the national Zhejiang University, while in 1946, ZJU changed its celebration to its 49th anniversary, tracing its history back to the Seeking Truth Academy. And its connection to the Seeking the truth academy is the use of the school building from that year.
It can be said that the school building has become a school to extend the history of the school must kill. This makes Hunan University, founded in 1926, with the location of the Yuelu Academy, has made a name for itself as a "millennium school".
Obviously, Wuhan University, which celebrated its centennial in 1993, has a lot to learn from the experience. The first year, Wuhan University traced the school's history back to the source of the National Wuchang Higher Normal School, founded in 1913, to October 1993, Wuhan University suddenly announced that the school's history back to 1893, the establishment of the Self-strengthening School. The only legacy left to the Wuchang Higher Normal School, which ceased operation as early as 1911, is the school building.
If we don't change our history, we'll fall behind
No one can explain exactly why WU suddenly changed the source of its history in 1993. In the previous decade, they had only celebrated their 70th anniversary, and overnight they capped themselves as a century-old school through the media. The most caught off guard were actually the sister colleges. So much so that in November of that year, Tianjin University wrote a special petition to the State Education Commission to raise objections, arguing that "Wuhan University's sudden announcement of its centennial celebration is really confusing and unacceptable".
1993 was a very ordinary year in the eyes of future generations, but when the events around that year were dissected, the tone of Chinese universities was invariably set. And pomposity has become synonymous with that tone.
Starting in the early 1980s, the United States held a number of best-college contests, and by 1986, some parts of Asia had voted for their best universities. Yes, Chinese universities never had a chance to make the list. Since the late 80s, the slogan of building world-class universities has been mentioned repeatedly in some universities. in February 1993, the Central Government and the State Council issued the "Outline of China's Education Reform and Development", which put forward the plan of building the "211 Project", so that a number of universities and disciplines would approach or reach the level of international first-class universities at the beginning of the 21st century. The program is designed to bring a number of universities and disciplines close to or up to the level of first-class international universities in the early 21st century.
Obviously, to be able to be selected for this project, the school will be able to get resources far more than other similar schools. Just take a set of data can be seen, in 2013, as a "211" sequence of Tsinghua University research total funding for the most, 3.931 billion yuan, of which the financial allocation of 2.775 billion yuan, accounting for 70.6%, and non-"211" of the The Southwest University of Petroleum, which has the largest amount of research funding, has only 26.1% of its 460 million yuan in financial allocations, or about 120 million yuan.
From 1996 to 2000, the total construction funds for the "211 Project" amounted to 10.894 billion yuan, of which 2.755 billion yuan was earmarked by the central government, 3.172 billion yuan was allocated to the departments, 2.489 billion yuan was allocated to the local governments, 2.363 billion yuan was allocated to the schools, and 115 million yuan was allocated to the construction of the project through other channels. channel construction funds of 115 million yuan. In addition, the departments and local governments arranged for 7.472 billion yuan of matching funds for the relevant infrastructure. At that time, China was practically running a "first-class university" with all the strength of the country.
Despite the fact that the first batch of names was not announced until the end of 1995, the reference to the "211 Project" undoubtedly gave many universities a shot in the arm -- packaging the school became a much-needed task. What better way to emphasize a school's excellence than with a 100-year history?
While it may seem like a pipe dream today to try to catapult a Chinese university into the world's top tier in just a decade or so, back in 1993 it was clear that Chinese universities believed in the myth, and they continued to portray themselves as a myth.
Not only the "211" project, but also other changes this year have made universities eager to prove their excellence.
As early as 1985, the central government has said, to reform the enrollment system of college students and the distribution system of graduates. 1993, the Party Central Committee and the State Council formally put forward, the reform of higher education graduates of the unified packet of unified points and "packet as a cadre" employment system, the implementation of the minority of graduates by the state to arrange for the employment of the majority of graduates, "independent choice of employment". "The majority of graduates are to choose their own employment. This has led students to choose their universities and majors in a more careful way.
In those years, although the policy of expanding university enrollment had not yet begun, colleges and universities had already pulled back a bit. the number of people taking the college entrance exams and the number of admissions in 1991 were 2.96 million and 620,000, respectively; in 1992 it was 2.96 million and 750,000; and by 1993 it was 2.86 million and 920,000. In the years since, the acceptance rate for universities has continued to rise, and by 1999, after the expansion of universities, the acceptance rate for universities had exceeded 50 percent.
The universities, which previously had absolute choice, gradually began to face a two-way choice from students, and competition among peer institutions became more intense. Than in a short period of time to improve the teaching level and quality of teaching, for the school to create a long history of the story is obviously more simple and direct. The name "century-old school" brings as much attention as an academic award.
Packaging school history has many benefits
It doesn't stop at 1993, but since that year there has been a tireless "arms race" among China's colleges and universities. From the desperately prolonged history of the university, to huge alumni donations, to huge advertisements around the world, Chinese universities are doing their best to be ostentatious about their celebrations.
The longer the university's history, the more capital it has to show off. On Hunan University's list of famous alumni, you can find militarists like Cai E and Huang Xing, political leaders like Li Da, Xiong Xiling and Cai Hesen, and even, not surprisingly, Mao Zedong.
Besides having more alumni with bigger names, a university that has passed its centennial year can more justifiably make its celebrations bigger and bigger. If the 20-year anniversary will be ridiculed for three days and three nights, it is not too much to say that the 120-year anniversary will take a week. After all, Tsinghua University's centennial celebration lasted more than three months.