Studying Chinese: Nankai University or Tianjin University

[Tianjin42]

The forums contain some useful information about both Nankai University and Tianjin University but not much in the way of comparison.

I am now living in Tianjin - teaching at Tianjin University (Nankai is located next to T.U.). I will be studying Chinese every morning starting very soon but first wanted to check if anyone has attended either Nankai University or Tianjin University (or both). Perhaps you encountered students who have attended one of the institutions?

Obviously a good deal of learning is down to the individual but I do want to check if one of the courses offered is significantly better than the other. I live in the south west part of T.U. campus so should be able to access both sites fairly easily.

Any information much appreciated,

M

[benhadad]

I have attended Tianjin U. How long have you been working there? I also have friends who have attended Nankai U. As you might know already , TJ is the older of the two but Nankai thinks itself as the new an younger and better of the two. Each have their strong points. I think if you look a the ratings you can see which areas are each schools strong points. Over all I decided on Tianjin University because the name was slightly more recognized by my past coworkers (who are CEO of companies) and several had attended the Top 3 Tsinghua, Renmin, and Fudan. I have also attended Tianjin Shifan Daxue, BLCU, and Tsignhua. In the end I felt Tsignhua Language (at the time 2000) was not as good as BLCU and thus I switched to BLCU. Nankai language was from what I heard better than TU back in 2007-2008, but many students said for 2009 it was better at TU, which I assume might be due to the Teachers they have. TU tends to be a bit more flexible than Nankai as Nankai seems to be on some type of ego trip lately.

According to local Chinese friends who attend Nankai, they said they have been royal pain in the behind about what course they could take, and were very rigid, where as TU was more flexible and trying to accommodate what the students wanted to study. I had a friend from England attend for 2009-2010 at Nankai who had also attended at Shifan, they ended up going back to Shifan saying the smaller classes there and teacher were better and the tuition was cheaper. But now Shifan campus in the city has been shut down and moved.

Ok that is my 2cents worth.

[HuShiwei]

I started a blog a while back, I've been a bit lazy in updating it but it does have some info on the university and a look at one of the textbooks we used. http://nankaiuniversity.tumblr.com I would say Nankai is probably a better choice than Tianjin for studying Chinese language.