Elite study program reforms, revives

Focus on students

In 2012, Niu Li, an English associate professor at the university, returned from studying at the University of Nebraska and began teaching English to the youth class.

She launched an innovative teaching method that has continued to this day, focusing on independent inquiry and returning the classroom to the students.

"Previously, after an English class, students might have only remembered a list of words and rules of grammar but still couldn't express their views or discuss issues in English," Niu recalled.

Now, each English session sets clear skills-based objectives. In-class teacher instruction is limited to 40 minutes, with the remaining time devoted to student-led activities through the 5E exploration model — engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate.

To prevent group discussions from becoming superficial, roles are assigned in class. A "timekeeper" monitors progress, a "recorder" organizes group viewpoints, and a "quality checker" reviews learning outcomes, ensuring every student participates deeply.

Authentic language material, such as classic works of American author Mark Twain, is used in class. In addition, students are discouraged from looking up every new word they encounter in the dictionary immediately and are guided to work out its meanings from the context.

With the arrival of the artificial intelligence era, Niu has actively explored new teaching methods, with AI serving as a "learning companion" rather than a mere "answer machine".

The achievements of the youth class are notable. Over the past four decades, the youth program has nurtured a remarkable group of high achievers across diverse sectors.

Chen Xi, from the class of 1989, became a tenured professor at Columbia University in the US. Wu Hanqing, from the class of 2000, served as Alibaba Cloud's chief security scientist, contributing significantly to China's internet security.

Tao Zhongkai, from the class of 2014, joined France's prestigious French Institutes for Advanced Study as a full-time researcher at just 26, becoming only the second Chinese researcher in its history. Pan Yuanzhi, from the class of 2016, founded a tech startup at 19, focusing on tackling core semiconductor "bottleneck" technologies to aid national scientific self-reliance.

Since 2010, the program's further education rate has consistently exceeded 80 percent, with the proportion of students entering the world's top 50 universities at a rate 3.86 times that of regular intake students, according to the university.