[2] He attended Lowrie Institute (The Pure Heart Academy, Qingxin Shuyuan 清心書院), which was connected with the First Presbyterian Church in Shanghai[2] (founded by John Marshall Willoughby Farnham, 1830–1917), graduating in 1896.
[2] In 1911 he wrote an extensive article for the newspaper on the history of Chinese students in the United States, beginning with Yung Wing (Rong Hong) 容閎 at Yale University in the mid-nineteenth century.
[4] Kuo Ping-wen was elected three times as Vice-Chairman of the World Education Congress (Shijie Jiaoyuhui 世界教育會) and became the Chairman of its Asian division in 1923.
[3] His removal from his presidential post at National Southeastern University in 1925 was a result of the intrusion of political forces into higher education and academia during the turbulent decade of the 1920s in China.
[4] Essentially, Kuo had made compromises with the warlords during that decade in order to develop National Southeastern University, and the rise of the Kuomintang set him at odds with the Nationalist leadership.
On October 25, 2014, a symposium was held at Columbia University Teachers College[7] dealing with Kuo's contributions to higher education in China and to Sino-Cultural institutions and affairs in the United States.
[3] It was at the University of Wooster that Kuo changed his plan to study law and focused instead on issues of educational reform, which became the basis for his career once he returned to China.