In 2018, the Ministry of Education of China released two announcements, speeding up “Double First Class” higher institutions' construction (the Ministry of Education.2018), and accelerating the construction of high-level undergraduate education and comprehensively improving the ability of personal training (the Ministry of Education.2018). These two announcements unveiled a new path for higher education institutions to compete for more academic enhancement efforts and talent fostering projects. Looking back, academy system was a tradition in China's ancient education system with thousand years history, and now, the introducing of academy system into the modern elite education has gained popularity to foster talents among elites. Researches have made efforts to study other countries' cases to find a way for Chinese institutions while borrowing certain concepts from the ancient academy system, and institutions are taking steps to carry out talent-fostering experiments. While it is difficult to set up a mode, this research focuses on answering the questions: what talents are we after in this new phenomenon, and to what extent could the modern education institutions replicate the academy spirit of the tradition.