Yellow River University of Science and Technology - Pioneer of private higher education

Abstract

This chapter presents a portrait of the Yellow River University of Science and Technology, which is located in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. In some ways it is rather surprising that the first fully fledged private university to develop in post-Deng China should have been founded in this large agricultural province, which is considered a heartland of Chinese culture, yet has not generally been seen as one of the leading provinces or regions in the opening up and reform of recent decades. Henan province is the most populated in China, with around 98 million inhabitants, more than 70% of whom live in rural areas. In the reorganization of colleges and departments that took place in 1952, Henan was a province which failed to gain any national level universities under the Ministry of Education.1. It experienced the traumatic loss of its most prominent faculties, departments and professors to the city of Wuhan in Hubei, the next province south, which became a regional centre in higher education for the Central South Region under the Soviet influence of the time. 2 Most of Henan’s public universities are thus provincial level institutions at present, and the province has put great effort into upgrading and improving them since 1978.