The future of China's system of higher education will depend on which aspects of its past are most highly valued. This article explores the history of higher education in China from its ancient academies to the modern Western‐influenced university. Although the May Fourth Movement of 1919 recommended the complete elimination of traditional elements in Chinese culture, the past century has revealed problems with the wholesale embrace of Western institutions. Modern higher education, based first on European models and later on American colleges and universities, has been a major part of the transformation of China in the past century. But cracks have appeared in the façade. The balance between tradition and innovation has been lost, students are being produced by universities like products of a factory assembly line, and college graduates often remain unemployed or underemployed for years after completing a degree. To remedy this condition, a number of reformers in China are looking to the past for answers. The article discusses both official and private experiments with “organic” educational programs that aim at creating well‐rounded persons, not merely students crammed with facts. A number of these new programs combine physical work with academic study as a reminder that life is a balance between mental and physical factors. More generally, the reform of modern education reclaims elements of the Chinese tradition that have been neglected, elements that recognize that education should ultimately aim at cultivating wisdom and not merely at accumulating knowledge.