正文
"It doesn't matter if I failed. At least I passed the concept on to others. Even if I don't succeed, someone will succeed."
To start the school, the 9 of them voted for a leader (Ma was voted to be the university principal), found a place, hired a team of staffs and kick-started the venture. The only problem? No one knew how to actually run a university.
But like any ambitious founders, Ma and his friends knew where they were heading thanks to a shared vision:
instead of teaching the skills for success (as if such a thing existed), they wanted to create an institution on failures
.
As experienced entrepreneurs themselves, the 9 of them knew more than anyone that rock-bottom is the foundation in creating successful business. Failure matters, and only by learning from failures one could stand a chance to success.
Hupan, therefore, will be a space for entrepreneurs to deconstruct success and learn all about failures
.
▲ Principal Ma giving a speech to Hupan University's Class of 17' students.
With such vision in mind, the founding team began to look for the first batch of students for the University's 2015 class.
Unlike conventional schools which treat students like students, in Hupan, students are more like partners of a business venture. "We honestly had no idea what to teach our students for the first day of class in Hupan," says Jack 2 years later, during the enrollment ceremony for the school's 2017 class. "but we didn't lie to our students, we just told them, let's build the school from scratch together. You all own this school as much as owning your own companies, so let's make it wonderful by finding more top-quality candidates for the school, by making the university community better, and by driving up the Chinese economy together as a leading, positive force."
▲ Hupan's students celebrating the start of a new academic year in March 2017.
From the beginning, Hupan University has always been very open about its selective nature for students. By admitting only 44 out of over 1000 applications in 2017, its acceptance rate (4.07%) was lower than that of Stanford (4.7% for this year's undergraduate college).
"China is filled with amazing young entrepreneurs nowadays, so it's not that we can't find enough good candidates", says Zhouyi, staff member of Hupan University's curriculum and technology team, "we decided to admit only 30-40 students each year because
we believed in the power of intimacy and emotional connections when it comes to education
. Also, Hupan is really just a baby at the moment; people think it's Jack Ma's school so everything must be grand and luxurious, but in reality, we are a small team trying to figure out everything by ourselves, and there's only so much we could accommodate before opening the new campus in 2020."
▲
A model of Hupan University's future campus.
