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Of All the Things China Covets About Princeton, It Covets Most Its HTML (UPDATED)

by Nick Summers | November 29, 2006 at 12:47 pm

For reasons deeply unclear to us, foreign countries look up to the Ivy League. Across the globe, aspiring universities are emulating Western-style curricula, credit systems, methods of instruction, — and, um, our web sites. Here’s princeton.edu:

Of All the Things China Covets About Princeton, It Covets Most Its HTML (UPDATED) 

And here’s the philosophy school at China’s Renmin U:

Of All the Things China Covets About Princeton, It Covets Most Its HTML (UPDATED) 

[Kudos to the Daily Princetonian's Jonathan Zebrowski for the find, plus Inside Higher Ed.]

UPDATE 3:15 p.m.: Bizarre: A Penn reader alerts us to this Daily Pennsylvanian story in March 2005, noting that Romania’s Universitatea “Lucian Blaga” din Sibiu (our reach school, weirdly enough) can’t get enough of UPenn.edu’s bedroom blues.

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20 Responses to “Of All the Things China Covets About Princeton, It Covets Most Its HTML (UPDATED)”

  1. Comments tony Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 1:03 pm

    You posted the same image twice.

  2. Comments adf Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 1:58 pm

    What? I don’t get it……..

  3. Comments IvyGate Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 2:02 pm

    Damn it.

  4. Comments CU Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 3:22 pm

    that’s mildly disturbing…

  5. Comments ANP Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 3:27 pm

    If it ain’t broke …

  6. Comments an IvyGate first Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 4:13 pm

    First ever plagiarism-related article without a reference to Kaava. I feel kind of disappointed somehow.

  7. Comments CRE Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 5:30 pm

    More common than you think. Compare this section of the University of New Mexico’s site to Cornell University’s site.
    http://artslab.unm.edu/
    http://www.cornell.edu/
    (At least they eventually added “Site based on Cornell’s code” to the credits.)

  8. Comments KB Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 10:02 pm

    This happened with Penn’s main page and some engineering school in China or India within the last year or two.

    It’s not like this is a new phenomenon, the Soviets copied our designs all through the Cold War.

  9. Comments CU08 Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 11:21 pm

    Ivy Fever…catch it!

  10. Comments Yaaaylie Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 11:48 pm

    Well, I guess there’s a reason Yale’s web site is so inept in comparison.

  11. Comments JamesBr Says:
    November 29th, 2006 at 11:49 pm

    It looks like the page (sph.ruc.edu.cn/en/) has been taken down and ominously replaced with one telling word: “Updating….” (yeah, they screwed up the ellipsis). You can see the old page via Google by searching “renmin university of china philosophy school,” and clicking the “cached” tab of the fourth link.

  12. Comments inno Says:
    November 30th, 2006 at 12:08 am

    Yaaaylie, I think our website is quite beautiful. I would personally consider it to be the most well-designed in the Ivy League. Princeton and Cornell might be more informative, but Yale’s homepage is just very clean and visually appealing.

  13. Comments treater Says:
    November 30th, 2006 at 12:56 am

    Nothing says flattery like imitation.
    It’s that dammed exchange program. I heard they’re copying our nukes too. Which came first, the Chicken or the egg?

  14. Comments adf Says:
    November 30th, 2006 at 1:53 am

    Brown has the best site

  15. Comments james from nyc Says:
    November 30th, 2006 at 9:11 am

    Ladies and gents,

    some more evidence in the obvious plagiarism of ivy sites:

    http://www.gccg.org.uk/

    http://www.yale.edu

    though in this case, im not sure whos copying who.

  16. Comments Special Brownie Says:
    November 30th, 2006 at 1:22 pm

    If by ‘best site’ you mean ’so horrible it will never be copied’, then yes, Brown does have the best site.

  17. Comments Skylar Durden Says:
    December 1st, 2006 at 2:12 am

    HAHAHA This is hilarious! They didn’t even change the colors or anything. Have they no shame??
    Skylar

  18. Comments Ganapathy Says:
    December 19th, 2006 at 6:15 am

    The Indian site http://www.iipm.edu is by far the worst in the history of website creation.

  19. Comments Bishal Says:
    December 19th, 2006 at 6:17 am

    Yeah dude, the iipm site is surely an HTML programmer’s recurring nightmare.

  20. Comments dartmouth05 Says:
    December 19th, 2006 at 9:59 am

    something tells me that neither ganapathy or bishal have ever touched a woman…nor shall they.

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