The implication is that, compared with today's situation, we should highlight the current shortcomings with the "glory" of history. However, if we ignore the regional differences of universities in the Republic of China, ignore the university cultures of different times and different natures, and talk about universities in the Republic of China in general, it will be a vague exposition, and its beauty will also be a utopian subjective imagination, which will cover up the complicated aspects of history.
St John's University, Jiaotong University, Fudan University, Guanghua University, Shanghai University and Zhong Da University were all famous universities at that time.
As a representative of the missionary university, St. John's teaching focuses on English and despises China's classical learning. The school does not encourage students to interfere in politics, and the students trained have no intention of entering the state bureaucracy. Most of them have become the elites of Shanghai's industrial and commercial financial circles.
Jiaotong University is a science and engineering school, which mainly trains technical talents. Students generally advocate instrumental rationality and are relatively conservative in political movements. Private universities such as Fudan and Guanghua, which mainly recruit middle-class children, are in a difficult situation because of the lack of stable economic support. They are criticized by the government for political liberalization and campus culture is accused of being divorced from the public.
Shanghai University is a revolutionary university, which is very special and aims at cultivating revolutionary talents. The atmosphere of revolutionary innovation is very strong.
Sun Yat-sen University is a model of party spirit education. Directly led by the Kuomintang Central Committee, the school aims to instill the theory of the Three People's Principles in students and pay attention to cultivating talents of the Party. It can be said that it is a real "true" party school.
By comparing the nature, study style, teaching style and campus culture of different universities, we can see that the universities in the Republic of China were not monolithic, with uneven internal polymorphism, and their appearance was far from what we often call "independence". The campus culture of the Republic of China is full of tension and contradictions, and the word freedom is by no means conclusive.
The universal feature of university culture in the Republic of China is not independence and freedom, but alienation. The word "alienation" is used to describe the universities of the Republic of China from the May 4th Movement to the Anti-Japanese War, and it is considered that the universities of the Republic of China are gradually falling into a decadent state. This alienation and decadence are inextricably linked with China's political culture.
After the May 4th Movement, the influence of political parties penetrated into the campus, which made the campus intellectual elite at a loss in various ideological debates. Strong western culture has become the dominant culture on campus, and it has also plunged them into the fierce conflict between Chinese and western cultures.
Political hopelessness, economic crisis and social chaos have made them generally lose the spirit of the May 4th generation to guide the country, and they are more and more suspicious of their ability to transform reality and full of worries about their personal future. During this period, the campus intellectual elite paid little attention to politics, generally disillusioned and despaired, fled into love or fell into nihilism.
In the traditional imperial examination era, the imperial examination effectively undertook the function of cultivating talents for the country, making intellectuals achieve outstanding achievements in learning the Four Books and Five Classics and become a link between officials and the people.
However, the university education in the Republic of China, as a substitute for the imperial examination system, failed to integrate smoothly with the political system, alienated from China society and quite isolated from the general public. It is the paradox of higher education in modern China that universities have not become real "scholar-type" institutions. It can also be seen that the real universities of the Republic of China actually have their own characteristics, and they are not completely independent, free and first-class like Cai Yuanpei's Peking University.