Xi Youmin, board member and executive president of the Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, a Sino-UK joint school based in Suzhou city, Jiangsu province [Photo/sjtlu.edu.cn]

Xi Youming, board member and executive president of the Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU), a Sino-UK joint school based in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, has forged his way in the domestic educational sector. 

One of the first group of people to benefit from China's restoring of the gaokao, or the national college entrance exam, in 1977, Xi still vividly recalls the days he had to work in the field during the day while using every spare minute to study at night. 

He gained his undergraduate degree in physics from Xi'an Science and Technology University, a master's in system engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University, and in 1987 was the first person from the Chinese mainland to be awarded a doctorate in the field of management engineering. 

He then joined a local university where he has experienced many of the major moments in China's higher learning education system. 

"I was appointed the executive president of SJTLU in 2008, after I had been the vice-president of Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU) for 10 years," Xi said. 

He said his decision to give up his "iron bowl" of working as the leader of a domestic public university to engage in a Sino-UK joint school might seem unreasonable to some people.