The National Beiyang University was first founded in 1895, earlier than the National Peking University. This is the first modern university in China. First known as Beiyang Western Learning School, it was renamed Beiyang University Hall the following year.

At the beginning of the school, it imitated the American university model and systematically studied western learning. Many equipment and school facilities used by students are imported from the United States, and classes are also taught in foreign languages, which requires students to have a good foreign language foundation. Tianjin Beiyang Western Learning School is known as "Cornell of the East", and its teaching plan, teaching contents and methods, teaching materials and teachers' equipment have all become models for setting up new universities in other places.

Founder Sheng Xuanhuai

1887 Gustav Derting, a British German, built a German-style building as a teaching building in the southeast of the police headquarters in Tianjin German Concession, also known as Tianjin Bowen College. During the period of 1892, Detering hired Tenney Charles Daniel, a graduate of the Royal College, among foreigners to set up a cram school in the college. A few years later, all the students in this class reached the entrance level.