In the early 1920s, the Chinese Ministry of Communications reformed the technical colleges under its control. The era constituted a dogmatic vacuum: Confucian elements had largely been abandoned, and Nationalist Party propaganda had not yet been instated. At Shanghai Jiaotong University, the US-educated civil engineer Ling Hongxun (1894-1981) oversaw this period as the school's principal. This article argues that Ling, more a practitioner than an educator, promoted a form of pragmatism that aimed at utilising solution-oriented learning to benefit the nation. In his speeches and essays, he propagated a training that prepared engineers to "save the country through transport and communications." Accordingly, the curriculum at Shanghai Jiaotong stressed the importance of practical experience, discipline and physical exercise. Despite remaining a short-lived era in education, pragmatism became the work ethos for a new generation of engineers.