Abstract: “Respect to the Holies” and “Academic Pursuits” were the two main threads of the education and cultural heritage of Chinese ancient academies. The two are mainly reflected in the rituals and academic regulations of academies, and they permeated each other. An institutional and cultural analysis of academies’ rituals and academic regulations shows: the sacrifice and lecturing during the rituals express the educational beliefs of “respect for the holy”;the worship of ancestors and mentoring from teachers and classmates indicate specific educational ideas and laid foundation for the education system. The academic rules of academies regulated the educational activities of “academic pursuits”, including three aspects: the system norms, academic authority and the independent running of academies. It is found that academies’ educational culture contains modern educational values such as beliefs in autonomy, academic freedom, equality of personality and university autonomy. What can be learned from this is that we should critically absorb the educational culture of ancient academies to develop educational beliefs of modern universities, draw on the institutional logic of ancient academies to improve modern university system, and incorporate the outstanding spiritual culture of ancient academies to cultivate the cultural qualities of teachers and students of modern universities.