Tangshan Jiaotong University (now Southwest Jiaotong University) is the birthplace of modern civil engineering, mining and metallurgy engineering and traffic engineering education in China, which has trained a large number of talents for the modernization of China. Wu Zhihui, a famous scholar, politician and educator in the Republic of China, once commented that "there are only a few schools in China that can really attach importance to scientific engineering", among which Beiyang (now Tianjin University), Nanyang (now Jinan Jiaotong University and Shanghai Jiaotong University) and Tangshan (now Southwest Jiaotong University), especially the latter, "can only be regarded as pure science and technology schools", which is more than the former two. The History of Tsinghua University also records that "when Tsinghua Institute of Technology was founded, there were Nanyang, Tangshan (referring to Tangshan Jiaotong University, now Southwest Jiaotong University) and Beiyang University in China, and engineering education was very successful".

Tangshan Jiaotong University was a famous university in the Republic of China and enjoyed a high reputation in the world. Most of the early presidents were officials with world vision, such as Shou son Chow, the foreign minister of the Qing Dynasty, Zhao Shibei, the first speaker of the Senate of the Republic of China, Zhang Zongyuan, and Liu Shixun, who all served as presidents of Tangshan Jiaotong University. Since then, educators Luo, Sun Hongzhe, Gu, Hu, Tang, etc. They have been in charge of Tangshan Jiaotong University, and Mao Yisheng (Tangshan Jiaotong University 19 16), a famous bridge expert, has been the president of Jiaotong University for four times. Under the management of these presidents, Tangshan Jiaotong University has advanced management and is one of the earliest universities in China to adopt a four-year undergraduate program and offer graduation projects. At the same time, a team of professors with Luo, Gu, Wu Jinghu, Huang Conservation and Li as the core (commonly known as the "five elders") has gradually formed. They all stayed in Tangshan Jiaotong University for forty or fifty years, so much so that they devoted themselves to the school. It has formed a long-term and stable team of professors with the "five elders" as the core, supplemented by professors such as Lin Bingxian, Fan Zhilun, Wang Junhao, He Jie, Luohe, Wenli, Xu Yuanqi and Zhu Taixin. In addition, Wu Zhihui, Hou Jiayuan, Zhu Wuhua, Hu also taught at Jiaotong University.