In a testimony published by Business Insider, American Thomas Stack reflects on his semester abroad at Zhejiang University in China, now a global research giant. For the equivalent of 1.84 euros, one could get a hearty meal at any time of day, from morning rice porridge to evening sweet and sour pork, prepared on demand.
The academic rigor at the university stood out, with four daily hours of language, personal study time, and three-hour seminars, including lectures on Chinese peasant history by a professor drawing heavily on his own experience during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Selected Chinese students had undergone a grueling admissions process after years of preparation for the gaokao entrance exam.
Stack discovered the severity of corrections, as even slight mispronunciations or misplaced strokes in written characters were harshly penalized. In 2025, he learned that his former university was named “The Most Productive University in the World for Research” by the Leiden Ranking, surpassing even Harvard. To him, this recognition reinforced the academic rigor he had observed since 2013, highlighting a culture of academic excellence on a scale few American universities can match.
For Stack, Zhejiang was not just a study abroad experience but a lesson on the shift in the global academic landscape’s center of gravity.
