Chinese higher education has been shifting away from the traditional "master-disciple" system of local private schools to large-scale universities ever since the arrival of modernized university education from the West in the late Qing dynasty and early Republican periods.
其實，從清末民初西方現代化的大學進入中國，高等教育由傳統師徒制的書院，進入龐大的大學教學體制，「尊師」的傳統就不斷受到衝擊。