On the Tsinghua University Website Defacement and the Fake Hacked Interview

Today, I came across a news piece titled “Tsinghua University Website Hacked, Fake News Fabricated by Hackers.” It basically reported that the Tsinghua University News Website was hacked [screenshot]. The hackers claimed that the current university education system is essentially “shoveling shit into students’ brains.” They even fabricated a fake news report featuring an interview with Tsinghua’s then-President, Gu Binglin, highly criticizing the current educational structure.

Reading the hackers’ original text, I felt the writing was extremely sharp, directly pointing out the severe illnesses of contemporary Chinese higher education. It immediately reminded me of a blog post I wrote in the past, which similarly criticized the current education system and university recruitment standards.

If writing those words back during my school days was just about venting my frustration, expressing my absolute disgust toward the academic regime—an emotional outlet with little empirical evidence—what I say now might be considered a bit more rational. At the very least, I have proven through my own subsequent experiences that Chinese higher education truly doesn’t offer much value.

By the standards of higher education, I was a failure of a student. Almost every semester, my class rank was at the absolute bottom. I never received a single scholarship, frequently failed courses, and earned nearly a third of my total graduation credits through make-up exams. Even to myself, I did not look like a good student at all.

The university curriculum felt outdated and useless to me. I spent my time learning what I actually liked, skipping classes to write code instead. I loved watching the software I built slowly grow more robust and complete… Looking back now, I had an immense interest in my own designs, often spending hours researching just to implement a specific algorithm. My code was packed with my once-naive ideas. But today, I realize that this self-directed learning was the single greatest wealth I acquired during my college years. Yet it wasn’t the university that taught me any of this. It leaves me feeling cheated all over again—paying so much tuition just to get a relatively stable environment to hide in is simply not worth it.

I have always firmly believed that learning shouldn’t be confined to schools. We should identify what we need and then learn it ourselves. Even in my current job, I am constantly learning things that are foreign to me but necessary for the task at hand. I resonate deeply with the saying “never too old to learn,” but I believe even more in “learning for application, and applying what you learn.” Otherwise, all knowledge is just a collection of worthless characters on paper.

Nowadays in China, keeping up with the Joneses has become an epidemic. People see that college graduates are everywhere, so they feel the need to inflate their own resumes by pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees. Academic credentials have become the sole proxy used by employers to evaluate students, but does anyone actually look at their real ability to learn (学力)? Personally, I have no interest in continuing my schooling. For me, staying in the academic computer science track wouldn’t teach me anything I want to know anyway, because the textbooks are mostly about history rather than foundations. To me, foundations are crucial, and creative thinking is essential, whereas history is of very little practical use.

And so, by leveraging what I taught myself, I secured a job that I truly enjoy. The most important thing about work is that you must love it; only then can you sustain it in the long run… I want to be the version of myself that I love, a happy self. Life becomes joyful, meaningful, and valuable because of it.

---Published after much hesitation. This blog post was written in late August 2008 and published on Teacher's Day 2008.

(Self-deprecating Easter Egg - hidden white text in the original post): When Little Flyer Bear wrote this post, I still didn’t want everyone to drop out just because university education is pretty trash. Because China is China, you won’t magically become Bill Gates by dropping out. So, adapt to the environment, change yourself (just like the Wang Leehom song, o(∩_∩)o…) and create value.