Founded in 1896, it was once a world-class university as famous as Tsinghua University and Peking University, and was known as the "Cornell of the East." It has trained 70 or 80 academicians at home and abroad, including Mao Yisheng, Zhu Kezhen, Lin Tongyan, Yao Tongbin, Chen Nengkuan, Huang Wanli, Lin Tonghua, Zhou Huijiu, Zhang Wei, Yan Kai, Xiao Jimei, Qian Chongshu, etc. Later, due to the major restructuring of departments across the country, Tangshan Jiaotong University was sadly divided into more than a dozen parts to support the country's famous universities and important scientific research institutions. Since then, Tangshan Jiaotong University's vitality has been greatly damaged and it has been unable to recover. In the end, only a few majors remained. In order to support the construction of the third-tier university, it was moved to Sichuan in 1971 and gradually developed into the current Southwest Jiaotong University.