This was spotted by a friend of mine. She says it’s in the Mineral Engineering department break room and has been there for years. Whoever put it up is probably gone by now. We’re wondering what it says. Can anyone help?
My wife, who is from PRC, says it is Chinese and means something like “Learning is endless” or “You never stop learning”.
She also adds that it’s a very popular saying.
She now tells me that, word-by-word, it means something like a boat struggling on an endless sea of knowledge. It’s part of a common Chinese proverb, but she says it’s hard to translate directly into English.
You could understand this as “The sea of knowledge has no end”.
This is a sort of 4-word structure that is a very common way to encapsulate a societal or philosophical concept.
They’re rather idiomatic, in that they don’t follow the regular rules of grammar, and are somewhat “literary” in form. In many cases, you actually have to know the history of the event or story that it comes from to understand its meaning.
Ah. “Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra.”
Now that was funny… and great timing! 
Literal meaning of the characters (right to left) : learning, gulf, no, shore (I think I’m reading that 2nd character correctly)
The four Chinese characters “学海无涯” literally mean"learning, ocean (not gulf), no, shore".
A more elegant translation for this line will be “The ocean of knowledge is shoreless”!
Interesting thing is that this is actually a part of a longer version - 学海无涯苦作舟, which translates to “while the ocean of knowledge is shoreless, the diligence could be your boat to get you across”. 
Thanks for the information, solidtext, and welcome to the board. Please note that this thread is 11 years old and most of the original participants haven’t been active in a while.