The Imperial Age with the Resurgence of Han Style

Chapter 280 Booming University Education

The earliest university established in the world is the University of Bologna in Italy. It was founded in 1088 during the Holy Roman Empire. It is widely recognized as the first university with a complete university system and the earliest development in the world. It is known as "One of the World's Universities". mother".

However, the modern university in the true sense was born in Jianye City, Hanzhou in 1637.

At that time, Qi State had not yet established a national system, but the National Government headed by Taizu established an industrial research institute in Jianye, named Tiangong College. While summarizing and summarizing existing industrial and agricultural production technologies, it also Conduct in-depth exploration and research on the world's most cutting-edge scientific theories and processes.

In the decades since its establishment, it has created countless brilliance and produced countless fruits.

The world's first practical steam engine was successfully developed under the joint development of Tiangong College and Heishan Industrial Research Institute.

The world's first steam locomotive was finally able to run on the railway track at high speed under the guidance of Tiangong College's many years of theoretical summary and personal participation in many experiments.

The first improved spinning machine, the most efficient loom in the world, the fastest flying fish boat (i.e. clipper boat) in the world, the first steam sailing ship...etc., a series of stories from Qi State and even The world's high-end industrial technologies and inventions are all participated and implemented by Tiangong College.

The largest donor to Tiangong College is the Daqi Imperial Family Fund, which receives hundreds of thousands of financial support from the royal family every year.

Even now, Qi has successively built more than 60 comprehensive universities and various professional colleges, but Tiangong College has still become the top engineering university in Qi with its strong scientific and technological reserves and rich humanistic reserves.

The universities in Qi are completely different from the government-run schools such as county schools, government schools, and Imperial Colleges at all levels established by the Qin State in mainland China. They rarely teach students Confucian classics such as the Four Books and Five Classics. Instead, they pay more attention to students' understanding of natural sciences. Research exploration, innovation and discovery, and attempt to integrate science and technology with social and economic development.

Most students will be equipped with living suites for two to four people, including study rooms and bedrooms, and the living conditions are extremely superior.

In comparison, Qi's university education model has perfectly avoided the rigid and restrictive Confucian education model of the Eastern tradition since its inception, as well as the conservative and backward educational concepts of Western European classical universities. From beginning to end, it emphasizes the close integration of teaching and research, combining independent subject systems and research methods to promote academic research and development, thereby creating and applying new knowledge. This model that emphasizes research and innovation set the stage for the Qi has cultivated batch after batch of outstanding talents in science and technology and has become a model for higher education throughout the world.

The educational value orientation also mainly emphasizes academic freedom, independent thinking, research orientation, cultural inheritance, etc., with the goal of cultivating professionals with academic depth and strict critical vision.

After all, if you can pass round after round of screening and finally get admitted to one of the top ten universities, you will definitely be a pillar of the empire, and the role it will play in society and the wealth it will create in the future will be immeasurable.

Unlike classical universities in Europe, where most of the research and learning content is focused on theology, universities in Qi prohibit the spread of theology and religion. Even traditional Eastern Taoism and Buddhism cannot preach or teach in schools. , develop believers, and as for the Catholic and True God religions that have been suppressed and restricted, they cannot enter the campus.

Emperor Taizu also pointed out that higher education should cultivate students' humanistic thinking and moral concepts, and also pay great attention to practical problems and specific applied subjects, such as social sciences, economics, law, politics and other subjects, believing that these subjects are beneficial to society. and contribute to economic development.

You must know that during this period, the Kingdom of England stipulated in the Uniformity of Faith Act promulgated in 1662 that belief in the state religion was not only a necessary condition for the appointment of clergymen and school teachers in the state church, but also a prerequisite for applying for admission and obtaining degrees in English universities at that time.

For students from poor families, the government and schools will also provide a certain degree of funding to help them complete their studies as much as possible.

What is even more commendable is that the admission threshold of Qiguo University is not determined by identity and status. All students who can pass the university admission examination, regardless of family background, high or low, can enroll.

However, in some humanities majors at Qi State universities, they will also conduct dialectical research and study on Confucian classics, trying to reinterpret the classics written by the sages of the past dynasties and integrate them with the continuous development and evolution of many societies in Qi State. The problems are integrated with each other to find some suitable theoretical support.

Every university in Qi will set up several independent colleges according to different majors. In some universities with abundant financial allocations or private donations, each independent college also has its own campus, including classrooms, canteens, libraries, sports fields, clubs and student dormitories.

When Emperor Taizu founded university education, he emphasized that students should have the ability to think independently and reflect, and advocated individual self-realization and truth exploration. At the same time, they should also apply the learned theories to practice, confirm each other, and strengthen each other. To promote, it is important not to work behind closed doors or follow the same path, resulting in metaphysical empty talk. These views had a significant impact on the later formation and development of higher education in Qi.

In terms of academic system, unlike European universities that divide the academic year into three semesters, Qi's universities have directly divided the academic year into two semesters from the beginning, with a five to six-week holiday in between to provide students with time to return home. Time for reunions or social practice.

They follow traditional education, and students' teaching is mainly based on the traditional question-and-answer system. This model is aimed at exam-oriented education, which greatly destroys and dampens students' enthusiasm for learning, makes it difficult to achieve ideal results, and is not conducive to the society's demand for talents at that time. The teaching content is mostly classical education.

The educational models and methods of many classical universities in Europe, including the prestigious Oxford University and Cambridge University in England, still continue to be conservative and backward.

Because classical education believes that lofty ideas and profound scholarship were pioneered by the aristocratic elite, higher education also serves those gentlemen who have no worries about money. However, for this period, people mostly aimed at emerging professions, because most of these emerging professions paid a lot of money and required high-level education.

After decades of development, Qi State has successively established more than 60 universities, with more than 100,000 students studying every year, continuously providing Qi society with useful talents in various disciplines, which has also provided Qi State with The continuous progress of industry and rapid economic development have made indelible contributions.

As the political and cultural center of the empire, Chang'an had seven universities, of which Imperial University and Chang'an University were the two most outstanding.

Although these two universities cannot compare with Jianye Tiangong College in terms of history or academic achievements, they are also temporarily unable to compete for the reputation of the first university in Qi. But this does not prevent the two schools from constantly fighting each other for the title of second child.

Chang'an University has been established since the founding of Chang'an City. Relying on the political status of the imperial capital and the key support of the government, it quickly introduced students from many universities such as Jianye Tiangong College, Jianye University, Jianye Normal College, and Northern Institute of Political Economics. A large number of well-known professors and scholars have established a relatively complete professional system, and it has quickly become the most influential comprehensive university in the eastern region.

The Imperial University was founded in the 1680th year of the Han Dynasty (), a full ten years later than Chang'an University, and it can be regarded as a junior.

However, the Imperial University was established under the personal leadership of Emperor Taizu of that year, and the majority of the university's operating expenses were also injected from royal funds. Therefore, from the beginning of its birth, it was deeply imprinted with the royal family and was even considered a royal academy.

Therefore, relying on the unremitting support of the royal family, Imperial University ushered in a period of rapid development in a short period of time. It gradually caught up with Chang'an University in terms of school size and academic influence, and started a fierce competition with it. compete.

Generally speaking, Imperial University is famous for its majors in politics, humanities and social sciences, and art, and is slightly ahead of Chang'an University in these aspects. Since its establishment, the school has successively produced one prime minister, three deputy prime ministers, five Dali Temple justices, more than 30 cabinet ministers and local governors, as well as more well-known scholars, books and newspapers. editor and writer.

Chang'an University is in the same line as Jianye Tiangong College, and is far ahead of Imperial University in engineering majors such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and applied science. In the selection of the Royal Science Prize over the years, Chang'an University and Tiangong College have basically won the awards in various disciplines.

As two of the most prestigious universities in Qi, and they belong to the same city, academic competition is inevitable, and non-academic competition also refuses to give in to each other.

Football, polo, handball, tennis, horse racing, wrestling, fighting, dragon boat racing, and the National University Games held every four years are all tit-for-tat, striving to outdo each other.

If something embarrassing happens to the other school, the other school will laugh at it and laugh at it.

In early March this year, after decades of debate, the issue of whether to allow coeducation was resolved with the strong support of His Majesty the Emperor.

According to the results of the discussion, Imperial University will admit 20 female students into the university for the first time at the beginning of the new academic year in September, and they will take classes in the same class as many male students. This marks the opening of the doors of traditional universities to women, and also means that all The status of women in the country has been improved again.

In fact, Qi Guo University also admitted female students before, but they were all women's colleges. Both the lecturers and the students attending the lectures were all women, in order to cope with the so-called "incompatibility between men and women in teaching and receiving" in social traditions.

It is said that as early as the founding of the People's Republic of China, Emperor Taizu ordered schools at all levels, including universities, to have male and female students attend classes together in order to save educational resources and costs.

However, this move was opposed by countless scholars and edicts. It is already shocking for women to enroll in school. If it is implemented in co-education with men and women, living in the same room for classes, how unethical would it be? Wouldn’t it be against social ethics, and it would also cause Various moral issues.

Emperor Taizu could not argue, but due to fierce public opinion, he had to abandon the decree of co-educational education and instead established an education model in which boys and girls attended separate schools.

Decades have passed. With the development of Qi's economy and the advancement of civilization, it has become more open and tolerant in its thinking. The entire society has generally accepted women's education and participation in the workforce. Subsequently, public opinion began to discuss coeducation, believing that schools should also open up the ban on women and allow women to attend comprehensive and professional universities and enjoy the same rights and obligations as men.

In the fifteenth year of Taiping (1719), the Ministry of Science, Technology and Education of the Cabinet promulgated the "Imperial Middle School Academic System", which officially stipulated: "Junior middle schools can be co-educational."

In the 1727rd year of Taiping (), Chang'an Minghua Senior High School implemented coeducation on a trial basis, which was the first of its kind for schools in Qi.

Now, institutions of higher learning such as the Imperial University have begun to experiment with coeducation, which has immediately aroused heated discussions among people from all walks of life.

As an old rival, Chang'an University will naturally not miss this opportunity. Many teachers and students ridiculed and ridiculed this, believing that women do not have enough intelligence and ability to complete the same courses as men, let alone that they cannot Understand the professional disciplines designed to cultivate men's logical thinking.

So, does the Imperial University specifically set up "female subjects" such as sewing, painting, small crafts, childcare, and housekeeping for these recruited women?
Also, when these women enter the Imperial University and study together with many male classmates, will they produce a few "elementary students" for the Imperial University students while "working together"?
Of course, the students at Chang'an University kept saying strange things, and there was always a hint of jealousy.

Damn it, co-educational, beautiful women in the company, this is "looking at the sword while drinking wine against the moon, reading at night with red sleeves adding fragrance", this is the elegant thing of our generation of literati!
In universities, in addition to receiving knowledge transfer from professors and scholars every week, students generally spend most of their time reading a large number of books and articles or discussing and exchanging academic ideas with their tutors. In addition, they also engage in sports, talks and entertainment, as well as with Social time with other students.

To become a qualified graduate, self-discipline and independence are indispensable. Only in this way can we learn the necessary knowledge and ideas, and then produce outstanding and innovative social elites.

However, there are also many students who can barely graduate under such an environment, especially those with strong family backgrounds and high-ranking officials who never devote themselves to study. They spend their time having fun, doing sports, and socializing, and they only study hard when they need academic assessment.

If there were a group of gentle and beautiful female classmates in college, they would be very tempting to the hormonal male students, adding a touch of beauty to the boring and boring college life.

(End of this chapter)