The paper is significant both in theory and in practice. In theory, the research offers a comprehensive review of American university mottoes and values embodied in them. In practice, this research will help to improve Chinese educators' interests in university mottoes. In the environment of persification and globalization, the research will be beneficial for Chinese to absorb available, suitable and perspective values and orientation in American university mottoes, leaving thinking space for the improvement and reform of our Chinese university mottoes and university internal values and making universities play a greater role in the development of China.

On the basis of previous studies, this paper first makes a brief introduction of research value of university mottoes. After that it focuses on studies about current situation of university mottoes, especially conducted by Chinese scholars. Features of American university mottoes are discussed as well with the purpose to make it clear that university mottoes can not only keep certain values in each stage but change for historical events. In the end of the paper, it provides Chinese universities with some revelations, aiming to promote Chinese university mottoes to perform better functions.

2. Literature Review

The study of university mottoes has become a research topic in China, but not in America. I can hardly find any works about American university mottoes in English published in China. In China, the research is mainly pided into three aspects: analysis of American university mottoes and revelations in Chinese university mottoes, analysis of Chinese university mottoes and university values, and comparison of university mottoes in America and China. The structure of such articles generally falls into three parts: the first is the description of university mottoes and the pision of stages; the second is the simple analysis of social reality, that is, the external environment where university mottoes come into being; the third is the study of the applications.

There are many works concerning American university mottoes in China. Li Qiaozhen discusses the features of American university mottoes, pointing out that mottoes in America have a religious color, free forms, strong stability and so on. It is affected by the values of American society. She also studies American university mottoes’ function of morality. Gao Yongchen claims that university mottoes in America and China have same values and different points, which has practical significance in promoting cross-cultural communication studies. Guo Shan studies 100 university mottoes both in America and China, trying to generalize features of university mottoes in two countries and analyze reasons of differences.源.自|吹冰,-论`文'网www.chuibin.com

In China, studies on American university mottoes have grown rapidly, but the vast majority of these studies are descriptive and confined to a specific period in the history of American higher education. They do not reveal whether university mottoes will change with the change of time or historical events or not.

Based on the previous studies, the paper tries to answer the research question: whether university mottoes show different characteristics in different times whereas sticking to some core values? The question is further pided into two specific questions: 

1. What are the core higher education values in American university mottoes throughout the history?

2. What are the core higher education values in American university mottoes as reflected in each stage of the development of American higher education?

3. Research Methods

3.1 Data Collection

The paper studies mottoes of 105 American famous universities. The universities and their mottoes are collected from the internet. First, I collected the names of the top 150 American universities. Then I tried to match the university names with the university mottoes as available on the website. This process left me with 105 American famous universities and their mottoes. In the process of collecting American university mottoes, I also find it was not always possible to express them in English. There were two main reasons: influenced by cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Latin represents a large proportion in English words. It can be seen in many American university mottoes. Secondly, with the same meaning, many English words have different forms. For example, “learn”, “study”, “learning”, “studying” are various in forms, but same in meaning. Therefore, when making tables, I chose Chinese to express the words in university mottoes.