The faculty governance system, initially implemented in Peking University by its president Cai Yuanpei in the late 1910s, served the purpose of preventing abuse of power by the university president as well as encouraging professors’ active participation in university administration. The system was supplemented and firmly established by Mei Yiqi during the period from 1926 to 1937, when he was serving as both the provost and the president at Tsinghua University. He further enforced the faculty governance system during the second Sino-Japanese war in National Southwest Associated University, where he worked as the president of the executive committee. Mei Yiqi’s ardent support for the system is attributed to his belief that independence of academics from the government or the administration should be respected, and accordingly professors, rather than students or administrators, should play a central role in a university. In his book Da Xue Yi Jie, he compared a university to a pond, the professors to big fish, and the students to small fish. He believed that the ideal education in a university should be conducted in the same manner as the movement of a school of fish in a pond, in which small fish follow big fish. Consequently, under the faculty governance system, professors could freely educate their students and do researches under little pressure, creating an autonomous yet efficient educational environment.