Editing Great Leap Forward (section)

=== Education ===
During the Great Leap Forward, the number of universities in China increased to 1,289 by 1960 and nationwide enrollment more than doubled to 962,000 in 1960.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Minami |first=Kazushi |title=People's Diplomacy: How Americans and Chinese Transformed US-China Relations during the Cold War |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |year=2024 |isbn=9781501774157 |location=Ithaca, NY |page=92}}</ref> This was a wave of "great leap forward" in [[higher education]].<ref name="Zhang2009">{{Cite web |last=Zhang |first=Ming |date=13 August 2009 |script-title=zh:高等教育大跃进:到处是大学遍地是教授 |trans-title=Great Leap Forward of higher education: professors and universities were everywhere |url=https://culture.ifeng.com/3/detail_2009_08/13/308516_0.shtml |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240212015631/https://culture.ifeng.com/3/detail_2009_08/13/308516_0.shtml |archive-date=12 February 2024 |website=[[Phoenix New Media]] |publisher=Shaanxi People's Publishing House |language=zh}}</ref><ref name="Kwong1979">{{Cite journal |last=Kwong |first=Julia |year=1979 |title=The Educational Experiment of the Great Leap Forward, 1958-1959: Its Inherent Contradictions |journal=Comparative Education Review |volume=23 |issue=3 |pages=443–455 |doi=10.1086/446072 |jstor=1187608 }}</ref> Many of the newly established universities, however, were affiliated with [[people's commune]]s and were directly transformed from local middle schools.<ref name="Zhang2009" /> For example, in [[Xushui County]], Hebei, every commune built one university of its own and local middle school teachers were promoted to professors; for another example, in [[Suiping County]], Henan, a new university was established with 10 departments and 529 students, where some "professors" were actually teachers from local elementary school.<ref name="Zhang2009" /> According to official sources:<ref name="Kwong1979" />

<blockquote>Some comrades expressed the fear that the movement would be a mockery of school education ....With regard to the development of higher education, some comrades, hearing that peasants have set up their own universities in the countryside, would ridicule the idea, believing that a university without a staff of qualified professors and students who have graduated from senior middle schools cannot be called a university.</blockquote>

Educational reforms during the Great Leap Forward sought to increase student and staff participation in the administration process, to favor students from worker, peasant, or soldier backgrounds in admissions, and to increase the role of the CCP and of politics in schools. Beginning in 1961, universities rolled back these policy initiatives, and increase meritocratic university policies instead of egalitarian ones.{{sfnp|Thornton|2019|p=59}}