When it was first run on a trial basis last year, the wealthy businessmen enthusiastically donated 120,000 yuan, and the Fujian governor Yamen also allocated 10,000 yuan, but the total amount of 130,000 yuan for running the school did not last half a year, and by the beginning of this year, it had already begun to default on the salaries of teachers, and several foreign teachers had already resigned, and then went to Jiangsu and other areas to find another high school.

This private school for enlightenment is simple, this teacher doesn't even need to invite those normal students, just use the old master of the past, these old masters enlighten the students, there is no problem in reading and writing articles, and some new disciplines can be read according to the textbook, anyway, when the enlightenment is the time of the students, as long as they know a foundation for the new disciplines, the formal learning has to enter the county primary school.

But that's not the case with this high school.

The higher secondary schools in the Chinese Empire can actually be called by another name, that is, 'University Preparatory School', the goal of these students is to be admitted to the Imperial University or two military schools, or simply to obtain the name of publicly-funded study abroad to study, the students' learning tasks are very heavy, and the requirements for teachers are quite high.

Some specialized disciplines basically need to hire foreigners to teach.

The biggest obstacle to the establishment of new education in contemporary China is not the traditional obstacle, in fact, let alone the people, even the students of Guangzhou University do not reject or even welcome the new disciplines, and the only problem now is that there are not enough qualified teachers!

All these things add up, which makes it extremely difficult to promote new education, especially higher education, and the specific manifestation is that it is very costly. This is to run a college preparatory school, and you need to hire foreigners. Otherwise, you will have to compete with the central authority for the graduates of the Imperial University, and the difficulties here are certain.

This Fuzhou Middle School has been running for more than half a year. Faced with the dilemma that the school's funds were about to run out, the school board of trustees, composed of famous gentry in Fujian Province and wealthy businessmen with huge capital, once again pooled together 50,000 yuan to maintain it.

At the same time, we had to change the original intention of running schools for free, and prepared to start collecting tuition fees for students this year, and it had to be high, and at the same time, it was also to increase the fundraising efforts for the whole society.

Because even if the wealthy businessmen and gentry who invested in this capital are rich, they can't throw hundreds of thousands of dollars into this bottomless pit every year!

As the first purely private higher education school in China, Fuzhou Middle School officially collects tuition fees for students, and its annual tuition, books and miscellaneous fees and other expenses are added together. As much as more than 120 yuan per person, it is one-third more expensive than the tuition fee of Imperial University.

Such a high tuition fee is an official announcement that this school has nothing to do with students from poor families in the future, because they can't afford such expensive tuition fees.

Fortunately, although the country and the people are poor in contemporary China, there are still many rich people among the people, and there are still many people who are willing to spend hundreds of yuan every year to support a child to go to school.

Therefore, when Fuzhou Middle School enrolled students in the fall of this year, although the quality of new students declined, it was charged tuition. At the same time, some of the donation income in the society has enabled the school to achieve a balance between income and expenditure, and what does the balance of income and expenditure represent?

It means that this private high school can continue to operate and add a higher school to contemporary China.

The success of Fuzhou Middle School also gives some hints to other places. You must know that there is only one university in the empire today, and there are only three government-run high schools, and they are all concentrated in northern Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu. Nowhere else.

In many places, the gentry, wealthy businessmen, and some local officials are already preparing to follow the example of Fuzhou Middle School to establish a private middle school.

Among them, people from Anqing, Huai'an, and Suzhou are more enthusiastic. Even the funds for running the school have been prepared, waiting for the support of the Ministry of Education and then the official opening. After all, this high school belongs to the category of higher education worthy of the name in the contemporary Chinese Empire.

Without the help of the Ministry of Education, they rarely recruit enough teachers on their own, and they are good enough to even solve the problem of teaching materials.

For these things, the Ministry of Education naturally welcomes them!

However, with the emergence of private middle schools, it means that the number of higher secondary schools in the Chinese Empire is growing rapidly, now there are four, but a year later it will be six or seven, and it is estimated that there will be more than a dozen in the future, but as a first-class high school, that is, a university, there is still only one imperial university.

Obviously, this is obviously not enough to meet the needs of the development of higher education in the Empire, but the cost of running a university is too great, and now the Ministry of Education has to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year in order to maintain the Imperial University and the existing three government-run high schools.

If another university is to be established, and the Ministry of Education has to provide funds, it will be difficult to sustain itself unless the Ministry of Education's funding is greatly increased.

However, now Lin Zhe said to Jiang Daoquan that he wanted to set up another university.

This made Jiang Daoquan couldn't help but be ecstatic in his heart, this Lin Zhe is the emperor of the empire, since he said that he wanted to establish a new university, then the funds for running the school must have been taken into account.

Because Lin Zhe, as the emperor of the empire, it is impossible not to know that the funds of the Ministry of Education are so small every year, and since it is to be done, there must be a way to solve the funds.

Immediately, Jiang Daoquan held back the joy in his heart, and then said: "If a new university is established, it will naturally be good to be placed in Shanghai, but the need to run a school is not small, and the funds of the Ministry of Education are already ......."

He didn't finish speaking, because what was the next word, Lin Zhe must be able to hear it, that is, the Ministry of Education has no money, if it wants to do it, where will the money come from?

Lin Zhe looked at this Jiang Daoquan, and saw the joy on his face that was not hidden, and the feeling of this Jiang Daoquan in his heart was also slightly better, although this person was a little stubborn, but he was still very concerned about education, and if he hadn't worked hard over the years, it was estimated that he would not be able to put the empire's new education system on the right track so quickly.

For his efforts, Lin Zhe saw it, otherwise with his stubborn and pedantic nature, Lin Zhe would have been swept out of the cabinet long ago.

Although Lin Zhe still didn't have a personal good impression of this Jiang Daoquan in his heart, it didn't prevent Lin Zhe from continuing to reuse him.

Immediately, he said: "In terms of funds, I have already said hello to the Ministry of Finance, and I will first give a sum of money for the upfront payment, but this is not much, and the follow-up needs will depend on the work of your Ministry of Education!" ”

Lin Zhe's meaning is very clear, the central government will support part of the money, but absolutely do not see the same as the Imperial University, all of it is on his body, the money given is at most the upfront payment, mainly the construction of school buildings, the purchase of necessary teaching equipment, the initial hiring of teachers, as for the follow-up investment, the Ministry of Education needs to solve it itself.

However, hearing Lin Zhe say here, Jiang Daoquan is already satisfied enough, as long as the central government gives money, with the first batch of money, he can think of other ways, such as seeing if he can get financial support from the yamen of the governor of Jiangsu or the yamen of Susong Taidao, or simply the yamen of Shanghai.

After all, if you run a university, it will play a greater role in promoting the image of the local government and even directly promoting the economy, and it is natural for the local government to pay for it, but how much you can get depends on your own means.

In order to show his attention, Lin Zhe also personally wrote the words "Jiangnan University" as the name of the school, and then personally instructed the Finance Department to squeeze out 300,000 yuan as the preliminary preparation funds for Jiangnan University.

The reason why the 300,000 yuan can be squeezed out is because after defeating the British and French coalition forces, the pressure on the military was greatly reduced in an instant, although there will be follow-up against the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and even in Guangdong will continue to fight with the British and French coalition forces, but these are no longer a fatal threat to the Chinese army.

The pressure on the military is less, and the pressure on this funding is naturally less!

At the same time, with the end of the war, trade and trade in Shanghai were quickly restored, and the General Affairs Department of Customs unilaterally abolished the previous tariff agreement, and adopted tax rate fluctuations for some import and export commodities, such as raw silk that was in short supply, it raised a small amount of export tax, of course, in order to ensure the international competitiveness of China's raw silk, the increase in the tax rate was limited, only to 8 percent.

At the same time, the tax rate on traditional Chinese commodities such as tea and porcelain has also been slightly raised, ranging from 6 percent to 10 percent.

In terms of imported goods, in order to support the domestic woven fabric industry, the import tax rate on foreign fabrics has been greatly increased, from less than 5 percent to 15 percent.

However, the tax rate on raw materials, that is, cotton and coal, has been reduced to reduce the production cost of domestic enterprises.

The reason why there has not been a large increase is that the import of opium has been completely banned, and the import tax of opium imported by this ban will naturally not be collected, and this part of the tax is actually quite large, and the import tax contributed by the opium imported in the name of "foreign medicine" in previous years has reached more than 10 percent or even more of the entire customs revenue.

The loss of this part of the import tax on foreign medicines is also offset by the increase in customs in other aspects, which has not been reduced, but has risen slightly, which is quite good.

After the financial pressure eased slightly, Lin Zhe was able to squeeze out part of the funds for domestic people's livelihood, which is only one part of the education, and also increased investment in water conservancy construction in the Jiangnan region, as well as the post-war reconstruction of some areas, especially to provide support to farmers in the post-war areas, so that they can resume production as soon as possible, which all require money.

Not to mention anything else, but Jiang Daoquan took the words Jiangnan University, and then went directly to Suzhou and Shanghai to visit local officials respectively, and strive to get them to support more support for the establishment of Jiangnan University. (To be continued......)