Research universities are an important component of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education in the United States, and its classification method has been continuously improved and refined in various updates. Before the 2021 edition, the classification of research universities was included in the basic category; the 2025 edition renamed the Basic Classification as the 2025 Institutional Classification, while adjusting the classification of research universities to a separate category of Research Activity Designations, with corresponding optimizations and adjustments to the classification methods and standards. The new classification, while retaining the two core indicators of “number of research doctorates awarded” and “research expenditure” to distinguish three types of research universities, has dozens of additional indicators, helping to accurately present the actual development status of each research university from multiple perspectives. It is recommended to scientifically plan the development scale of China’s research universities, thoroughly evaluate the feasibility of core classification indicators such as the number of doctoral degrees awarded and research expenditures, objectively establish basic standards for independent classification, and set up several observation indicators to build a multi-dimensional research university classification system with Chinese characteristics.

Educational evaluation is pivotal to building a strong nation in education, and classification framework holds strategic significance for comprehensive reform. China’s graduate education classification evaluation has undertaken valuable explorations but still faces challenges such as blurred classification ontologies and mismatched functions. This study constructs an “Adaptive-Ecological Classification”(AEC) Framework for Evaluation, grounded in systems thinking and the foundational logic of “ontology-driven, goal-oriented, and institutionally coordinated” classification evaluation. It proposes a practical pathway comprising macro-level ecological planning, meso-level value-oriented guidance, and micro-level standard system construction, providing theoretical underpinnings and practical guidance for building an autonomous classification evaluation ecosystem.

Based on large-scale student survey data, this study explores the underlying mechanisms by which AI influences college students’innovative thinking within curricular environments characterized by varying levels of “challenge” and “support”. The findings reveal that learning engagement acts as a bridge in enabling AI to foster innovative thinking. Specifically, AI exerts its effects indirectly primarily by stimulating deep cognitive and emotional engagement, and its efficacy is shaped by the curricular environment. The curricular environment exhibits a dual moderating logic of “amplification” and “substitution”: a “high challenge–high support” environment strengthens the “amplification” pathway mediated by learning engagement, whereas environments deficient in either challenge or support highlight the “substitution” pathway. The educational value of AI is not an intrinsic attribute but is co-constructed by the curricular environment through the synergy of challenge and support.

The typology method is grounded in Weber’s ideal type paradigm, constructing concepts to generate typologies that facilitate empirical analysis and comparison, thereby achieving the goal of explanatory understanding of social actions and their cultural meanings. This method is particularly well-suited to educational research, which is characterized by its humanistic objectives, heterogeneous subjects, and complex contexts. However, typology method is frequently misapplied in current educational studies. This paper systematically examines the paradigmatic tradition of Weberian ideal types, the typology method derived from it and its distinction form taxonomy. It proposes two distinct analytical approaches of typology: “typology as understanding” and “typology as explanation”. The conceptual features, technical procedures, and practical applications of these approaches are thoroughly discussed. The study aims to provide methodological guidance for the application of typology in educational research, offering an analytical pathway that balances theoretical advancement with real-world complexity. It seeks to enhance methodological reflexivity in Chinese educational research while providing robust conceptual tools for the explanatory understanding of educational phenomena and practices, promoting the research of iconic concepts and original theories in China’s educational research.

Against the backdrop of digital transformation in vocational education, the explicitation of tacit knowledge has emerged as a crucial issue for enhancing the quality of skilled talent cultivation. The essence of tacit knowledge explicitation lies in achieving multiple transformations: from tacit knowledge to formalized knowledge, from experiential knowledge to conceptual understanding, and from implicit information to explicit encoding. In practice, tacit knowledge explicitation faces numerous challenges, including epistemological misunderstandings, technical limitations and integration difficulties at the implementation level, fragmentation of meaning construction at the pedagogical transformation level, and institutional and mechanistic barriers at the environmental level. In this regard, it is necessary to construct a digitally-supported multidimensional framework for knowledge identification and extraction, innovate tacit knowledge representation strategies in digital teaching material design, and establish quality assurance and continuous updating mechanisms for digital teaching material development.

Against the macro backdrop of building an educational powerhouse and advancing Chinese modernization, the interaction between universities and regions has been endowed with new significance in the current era. Based on national strategic needs and the current state of higher education development, this article systematically analyzes the issues of regional “imbalanced and inadequate development” in China’s higher education. It elucidates the functional positioning of universities as the pivotal hubs for “cultivating talent, driving innovation, and leading cultural development”. The article proposes that universities need to deepen their symbiotic relationship with regions through three major pathways: “structural reform, transformational change in models, and systemic reform”. This involves further optimizing educational evaluation and internal governance to stimulate endogenous motivation. Looking ahead, more universities should progress from?“grounding locally while aspiring globally”?to?“trailblazing uncharted territories”,?serving national strategies through deep integration into regional development and contributing the wisdom and strength of Chinese higher education to the world.

The classified development and evaluation of higher education institutions represent the top-level design for high-quality development in China’s higher education sector, as well as a major initiative in the reform of the governance system and mechanisms. The classification-based evaluation of higher education institutions exerts a strong guiding influence on their classified development, necessitating a logical congruence between the two. This article begins by interpreting the concepts of classified development and classification-based evaluation of higher education institutions and introducing their policy background. It then analyzes the logical congruence between classified development and classification-based evaluation, supplemented by a case study of practical experiences in the United States. By elaborating on the value logic and open logic of the reform in classification-based evaluation, and through discussions on the effectiveness evaluation of “Double First-Class” construction universities and the evaluation of general higher education institutions, this article proposes key development directions for the reform of classification-based evaluation that are conducive to the classified development of higher education institutions in the new era. These directions include value guidance, framework construction, theoretical innovation, and the refinement of evaluation indicators.

As the core combination point of technology as the primary productive force, talent as the primary resource, and innovation as the primary driving force, universities are deeply embedded in the overall national strategy and serve as a key hub supporting the construction of an educational powerhouse. The “15th Five-Year Plan” is a crucial period for building a strong education country. The development strategy of universities should anchor the goals of building a strong country and national rejuvenation, deeply rooted in the century-old gene of “saving the country, rejuvenating the country, and building a strong country”. Through the symbiotic evolution of historical position and the mission of the times, the dynamic balance of law cognition and strategic adaptation, the integration and innovation of digital intelligence empowerment and the essence of education, the development paradigm should be systematically reconstructed. The development of universities requires interdisciplinary integration to solve the “bottleneck” technical problems and build an independent knowledge system; Guided by cultural values, deepen mutual learning among civilizations and enhance international discourse power; Guided by social demand, improve the precision service mechanism and enhance service efficiency. The university will achieve a strategic leap from “adapting to the environment” to “leading transformation” by serving the self-reliance and self-improvement of science and technology, fostering new quality productive forces, and building an innovative country, thereby providing core strategic support for Chinese-style modernization.

Cultivating top-notch innovative talent in foundational disciplines is a strategic task in building a strong education nation, and academic aspiration is vital to top-notch students’ development. Using Q methodology, this study examines the aspiration types and their formation among 23 top-notch students. We identify three types: an interest-first, intrinsically driven type; a reality-oriented, goal-integrative type; and a hesitant, passively sustained type. They conrrespond to the veritists, pragmatists, and strugglers. Differences in program-application logic, academic and research experiences, and attitudes toward external evaluation and competition jointly shape these patterns. Accordingly, tailored support is needed to help students sustain growth that serves both long-term personal development and national strategic needs.

Teaching motivation and teaching engagement are two key factors influencing teachers’ professional development and students’ learning outcomes. Based on survey data from 7 996 teachers across 134 undergraduate institutions nationwide, this study applied latent profile analysis to examine the profiles, effects, and distribution characteristics of teaching motivation and engagement among Chinese university teachers. The results identified five distinct profiles: low motivation and low engagement, relatively low motivation and low engagement, high motivation but low engagement, low motivation but high engagement, and high motivation and high engagement. Each profile was influenced by environmental factors, and their distribution varied across demographic variables. The study deepens the understanding of teaching mechanisms among Chinese university teachers.

Research on the global trends of higher education development helps to profoundly grasp the logic of transformation and future directions of higher education. An analytical framework is constructed from the three dimensions of dynamics, priorities, and stakeholders in higher education to analyze the development trends in major countries. This study identifies several key tendencies of higher education: a trend of talent aggregation driven by both market and international dimensions; a trend of technological competition under the dual impetus of strategy and excellence; a trend of collaborative innovation through the integration of education and industry chains; and a trend of negotiated advancement based on both internal and external logics. At present, China’s higher education development has completed the phase of “quantitative” accumulation and entered a new stage. It should focus on enhancing the capabilities of innovation development, high-quality development, and balanced development, and give full play to its leading role in building a strong education country.

AI is increasingly demonstrating capabilities in academic writing that rival or even surpass those of humans. Consequently, to safeguard the originality and rigor of degree theses, some universities have established specific AIGC detection rates as a criterion for identifying academic misconduct. While this policy may temporarily curb the direct use of AIGC content, it is already presenting challenges such as false positives and a widening digital divide. In the long term, it could expose the inadequacy of current regulations in the face of technological progress, leading to a fundamental misalignment of regulatory boundaries. Therefore, navigating the AI era necessitates a paradigm shift guided by STIs—moving from formalistic judgment to value-based assessment, and from technological disciplining to capability development. By constructing multi-level evaluation systems, strengthening technical support, and establishing adaptive regulatory frameworks, we can accommodate the future paradigm of human-AI collaborative creation. This approach offers a new analytical framework for understanding academic innovation in the age of AIGC.

The relationship between academic excellence and scholarly innovation remains a controversial topic within academia. There is a lack of systematic empirical evidence to clarify the debate. Drawing on survey data from a pilot university of the Plan for Strengthening Basic Disciplines, this study compares students with high, medium, and low levels of academic performance in terms of their innovative potential and research competence. Hierarchical regression analyses are further employed to explore the differentiated predictive effects of performance in various types of courses. The results indicate that overall academic performance is significantly and positively associated with creative thinking ability, research efficacy, and the probability of achieving research outcomes. However, the overall academic performance can barely predict creative personality traits. Moreover, performance in foundational courses strongly predicts research efficacy, whereas performance in core disciplinary courses more effectively predicts creative thinking ability and the probability of achieving research outcomes. Neither type of coursework demonstrates a significant predictive effect on creative personality traits. Based on the findings, the study proposes several targeted suggestions for university cultivation, including opening up evaluation concepts, adding assessment of personality traits, and optimizing instructional design.

The Degree Law clarifies the legal status of degree applicants, establishing the right to apply for a degree, the right to obtain a degree, and the right to hold a degree as their core rights. Although Article 41 of the Degree Law stipulates three scenarios for legal remedies—“failure to accept a degree application”,“failure to confer a degree”, and “revocation of a degree”—it remains necessary to reasonably define the requirement to “request the relevant authorities to handle the matter in accordance with the law”. Challenges in realizing degree applicants’ rights include: legislative ambiguity hindering the establishment of a normative basis for litigation; the specialized nature of academic judgments limiting the scope of admissible degree disputes; and constraints on the extent of judicial review intervention in degree disputes. Consequently, it is necessary to establish a comprehensive litigation safeguard system. Legislation should clarify the legal basis for initiating lawsuits, ensure reasonable judicial review intervention in degree disputes, and establish differentiated standards for judicial review. Additionally, complementary systems must be refined by enacting the “Implementation Measures for the Degree Law” to broaden avenues for judicial remedies.

As a key area in the new round of institutional reform, institutional reform in universities serves as the fundamental focus for accelerating the modernization of university governance systems and capabilities. To reveal the internal mechanisms of higher education institution reform, this study adopts the grounded theory approach to analyze 40 typical cases of institutional reform initiatives in universities, thereby summarizing and refining the practical logic behind these reforms. The research findings indicate that such reforms are driven by practical issues such as operational inefficiency and excessive institutional expansion. They require systematic implementation through synchronized streamlining of administrative bodies and staffing, strengthening departmental restructuring and integration, centralized management, and digital transformation process redesign. This aims to reduce organizational structures and staffing quotas, achieve systematic and holistic governance, and prioritize risk mitigation, steady progress, job transfers, and faculty governance capacity enhancement as safeguard mechanisms. Consequently, it is necessary to further establish an overall action framework for institutional reform in universities, explore scientific decision-making foundations for institutional streamlining and optimization, and implement a relatively flexible and adaptive organizational reform model through supportive organizational culture and humanistic care.

The university teaching and learning system and pedagogical practices are continuously challenged by the iterative development of artificial intelligence. The advancement of AI imposes new demands on various dimensions of higher education, including its philosophy, institutional frameworks, and methodologies. “Decentralization” can be interpreted as a process of distributing power, information, or resources, characterized by high autonomy, inclusiveness of innovation, efficient connectivity, and equity. It aims to enhance the overall efficiency of the system, increase transparency, and strengthen risk resilience by reducing dependence on central authority. Decentralization offers a novel conceptual model for addressing the challenges posed by AI technologies in university talent cultivation. It can strengthen students’ individualized development, promote their value realization and innovative capacities, and safeguard educational equity. Furthermore, it should be emphasized that the decentralized model ought to augment rather than replace traditional teaching approaches, while paying close attention to potential risks such as knowledge fragmentation, quality degradation, blurred authority, and value nihilism.

Artificial intelligence is a key field for the country to drive the development of interdisciplinary disciplines and emerging engineering disciplines. By applying social network analysis to the data of AI-related emerging engineering disciplines independently established by universities from 2019 to 2025, it is found that: the overall network evolution presents the characteristics of “scale expansion and structural stability”, with the network scale growing continuously and indicators such as network density fluctuating stably; the node evolution features “stable core and adjusted periphery”, where supporting disciplines like Computer Science and Technology have always been the network hubs; the core-periphery structure evolution shows the characteristics of “core expansion and dynamic replacement”, with six disciplines remaining in the core area and some disciplines moving into or out of the core; the network evolution is mainly driven by the joint efforts of AI supporting disciplines and scenario-based disciplines under government regulation and market adjustment. In the future, it is necessary to promote a new scenario-driven paradigm for discipline development, strengthen the leading role of core disciplines and central disciplines, enhance the construction of AI infrastructure, and explore new models for the development of interdisciplinary disciplines that go beyond disciplinary institutions.

Doctoral student diversion system is an important guarantee for the high-quality development of doctoral education, and it plays an significant role in strengthening the management of cultivation process, enhancing the cultivation quality and promoting the diversified development of doctoral students.The research reveals that while the system has achieved phased progress, it still faces many difficulties, such as insufficient value manifestation, low subject synergy, fuzzy rule design, insufficient operation rigidity, and weak interaction in the system field. These dilemmas stem from micro-level constraints of individual habits and lack of subjectivity, meso-level collective action failures due to interest conflicts and the absence of supervision mechanism, and macro-level conflicts between the system and the environment. Therefore, it is urgent to optimize from the aspects of consolidating value consensus, strengthening subject actions, improving institutional design, improving operational mechanisms, and building a symbiotic field.

Artificial intelligence technology poses fundamental challenges to the traditional teacher-student centered educational structure and urgently requires the construction of new educational models. The five element education model of “teacher-student-AI-environment-culture” proposes that the educational logic in the intelligent era should shift from traditional binary teaching between teachers and students to a multi element collaborative interactive network. The five element education model is student-centered with AI at its core. By reshaping learning methods, teaching methods, environmental ecology, and cultural atmosphere, it cultivates students’ core competencies of the “eleven abilities”—such as innovation and creativity—that enable them to master and surpass AI. Based on the previous exploration of Beijing Institute of Technology, this model provides an effective practical path for cultivating top-notch innovative talents in the era of intelligence.

As a vital component of China’s higher education system, local high-level universities shoulder multiple missions, including serving regional economic and social development, cultivating high-quality applied talents, and facilitating the transformation of scientific and technological achievements. This paper begins with an exploration of the evolution of China’s higher education management system, analyzing the origins of development issues faced by local universities. It then examines the current status and challenges encountered by local high-level universities. Based on case studies, the paper proposes strategies and recommendations for their construction and development. The research indicates that, compared to centrally administered universities, local high-level universities lag in policy support, talent attraction, and resource aggregation; however, they possess distinct advantages in creating regional characteristics and serving local development. To build local high-level universities, it is essential to clarify their strategic positioning and proactively align with regional development needs; dynamically adjust disciplinary and professional structures to establish mechanisms closely linked with industrial chains; develop collaborative innovation models integrating government, industry, academia, research, and application to achieve resource sharing and mutual benefits; balance the relationship between serving local interests and pursuing excellence, thereby forming comparative advantages in distinctive fields. Ultimately, local high-level universities should strive for leapfrog development through regional service and realize their value within national strategies and regional growth.

Organized interdisciplinarity is an important approach for research universities to effectively address national strategic needs and foster innovative knowledge production. However, there exists a tension between efficiency and vitality, which constrains the outcomes of interdisciplinary knowledge innovation and integration. This study selects three research universities—Zhejiang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and ETH Zurich—as case studies, employing a “micro-analysis” technique to deconstruct the specific processes of organized interdisciplinarity. The findings reveal that: Building on the disciplinary foundation of research universities, the “organized approach” in interdisciplinary efforts should be regarded as an efficiency pathway rather than a meaningful goal, and both organized and free exploration paths should serve to construct a disciplinary ecosystem; Research universities primarily advance organized interdisciplinarity through practical strategies such as resource support, organizational adaptation, and cultural guidance; Multiple mechanisms, including advantage activation, resource balancing, and ecological empowerment, contribute to achieving a dynamic balance between organizational efficiency and ecological vitality in organized interdisciplinarity in research universities.

Western China faces dual challenges of talent outflow and declining momentum. Through policy text analysis, binary Logit regression, and Tobit regression, this study investigates characteristics of talent policy instruments in Western China from 2012 to 2022 and their impact on the mobility of graduates from “Double First-Class” construction universities. It is found that the policy instruments exhibit three imbalances: between “hard input and soft support” on the supply side, “macro strategies and micro-implementation” on the environmental side, and “internal cooperation and external leverage” on the demand side. Among these instruments, infrastructure, talent development, regulatory control, tax incentives, and industry-academia-research-government cooperation are strongly predict of graduates staying to work in their hometowns, while government procurement, public services, and financial support instruments significantly attract talents. Ahead, the supply side should optimize educational resource allocation and the development of digital platforms; the environmental side should strengthen legal safeguards and the targeting of strategic measures; and the demand side should establish an industry-academia-research-government collaborative innovation system and a targeted government procurement mechanism. A dynamic policy closed-loop of “digital-intelligent optimal allocation, effective implementation, demand chain traction”will promote rational talent flow and regional innovation interaction, resolving Western China’s talent development dilemma.

Top innovative talents are the core force underpinning national original innovation capacity and high-level technological self-reliance. At present, China’s integrated cultivation of top innovative talents is mainly led by secondary schools, with limited exploration extending downward to primary education and insufficient mechanisms effectively linking upward to higher education. Universities generally remain in a “post-hoc receiving” role within the talent selection and cultivation chain. Taking the role transformation of universities in integrated cultivation as a point of departure, this study draws on the cases of the United States, Germany, and Singapore to systematically examine their institutional designs and operational mechanisms in early identification, curriculum articulation, research practice, and teacher development. Based on the practical challenges facing China, the study proposes targeted suggestions: universities should shift away from a “relay-style” logic of education and reshape their mission within the national talent ecosystem; they should build tiered cooperation mechanisms to enhance the capacity of ordinary secondary schools; they should take the lead in establishing professional support systems for teachers engaged in cultivating top innovative talents; and they should strengthen their hub function to construct cross-stage collaborative governance platforms for talent cultivation.

The development of an original philosophy and social science textbook system with Chinese characteristics is an inevitable requirement for accelerating the construction of high-quality textbook and high-quality education systems, is an era demand for achieving a systematic leap from a large country to a leading country in education. The proposal of original philosophy and social science textbooks and textbook system with Chinese characteristics is underpinned by contemporary, historical, and practical logic. Accentuating “Chinese characteristics” is the defining feature of the new era philosophy and social science textbook system. Highlighting originality is a hallmark of high-level philosophy and social science textbooks in the new era. The essence of original philosophy and social science textbooks with Chinese characteristics is distinguished innovative textbooks characterized primarily by independent and original innovation. To achieve a systematic leap towards an original philosophy and social science textbook system with Chinese characteristics in the new era, it is necessary to grasp the overall direction of ideological leadership, practice orientation, innovation drive, and systems integration.

In the global transition of teacher education toward professionalization, China has developed a distinctive model with notable achievements, yet still faces key challenges: unclear positioning of training institutions, a relative decline in teachers’ academic standards, and uneven teacher distribution. Research indicates international consensus on the strategic importance of teacher education. A correlation exists between the status of the teaching profession and that of normal universities. Institutional level outweighs institutional type in importance, and normal universities remain irreplaceable within China’s system. Cultivating high-quality teachers at scale while ensuring equitable distribution remains a worldwide challenge, yet it is central to China’s teacher education approach. This feasibility stems from active state intervention under CPC leadership, which combines national strategic guidance with efficient market-based resource allocation. To strengthen the system, China should promote participation of “Double First-Class” construction universities in teacher education, maintain and enhance normal universities, expand targeted support programs, increase directed enrollment in teacher training, and improve teacher status and compensation to boost the profession’s appeal.

Cultivating innovative engineering talents through interdisciplinary approaches represents a critical initiative for universities to optimize disciplinary structures and pedagogical models responding to technological innovation trends. This study conducts a comparative analysis of interdisciplinary engineering programs at four universities, including Purdue University. Findings reveal that driven by environmental, institutional, and student needs, programs develop dual pathways combining predetermined specializations with student-designed concentrations. They construct a curriculum grounded in the principle of sustainability and built around cutting-edge interdisciplinary courses and capstone projects, implement faculty development through departmental or cross-school collaboration, and achieve governance via advising services, committees, and stakeholder institutions. The study proposes that China's Emerging Engineering Education (NEEE) initiative should promote sustainable interdisciplinary development based on emerging technologies and reshape learning boundaries through holistic engineering perspectives.

Although the cultivation of foreign-related legal talents in Chinese universities has undergone more than 20 years of exploration driven by policies, there are still practical difficulties in the face of the complex environment of international rule system reconstruction and intensified institutional competition in emerging fields, such as insufficient talent supply and a disconnect between professional abilities and strategic needs. This exposes the prominent contradiction that classical training models are difficult to adapt to the practice of foreign-related legal systems in the new era. An empirical study was conducted on the training mode of foreign-related legal talents using 28 designated universities by the Ministry of Education as samples, and it was found that there is a dual dilemma of structural imbalance and Operational Deviation in the current training of foreign-related legal talents. In this context, we should take strategic orientation as the core, establish a hierarchical training system, build a pyramid shaped talent supply mechanism, implement industry demand feedback and regional tactical adaptation strategies, and achieve fundamental improvement in the quality and efficiency of foreign-related legal talent training through the establishment of a full cycle dynamic evaluation system, strengthening the construction of foreign-related teaching staff and the ecological reform path of talent export transformation mechanism.

Evaluation and quality assurance in higher education play an important role in promoting quality awareness, clarifying quality concepts, reinforcing quality norms and promoting quality construction. However, it is also faced with the tension between uniformity and diversity, normativity and autonomy, authority and utilitarianism that comes with standardisation. Its roots lie in scientism and its cult of quantification. In response, there has been a postmodern turn towards de-indicatorisation of evaluation, with a focus on the integrity, diversity and development of the object of evaluation, a look at the life activities of the object of evaluation itself, and an emphasis on the building of a culture of educational evaluation and quality assurance. The excellent tradition of Chinese educational evaluation is instructive for the postmodern turn in higher education evaluation and quality assurance, which should be creatively inherited and innovatively developed.

Based on data from undergraduates questionnaire, this paper examines the relationships between socio-emotional skills, high-impact educational activities, and undergraduates’ clarity of career planning. The results indicate that professional learning and entrepreneurial practice activities are significantly associated with the clarity of career planning for non-“Double First-Class” construction universities undergraduates. Social practice activities positively correlate with undergraduates’ career planning clarity from “Double First-Class” construction universities’. Among non-“Double First-Class” construction universities undergraduates, emotional regulation and engaging with others skills are significantly related to their clarity of career planning, while collaboration and open-mindedness skills show a negative relationship. The Shapley value decomposition method further reveals that the combined contribution rate of the two types of factors to the clarity of career planning exceeds 52%. Among them, socio-emotional skills are the most influential factor for undergraduates from non-“Double First-Class” construction universities, whereas high-impact educational activities are most influential for those from “Double First-Class” construction universities.

Based on the Triadic Reciprocal Determinism, the innovative ability of doctoral students is the result of the interaction among academic subjects, research practice, and the academic ecosystem. The elements of academic subjects include cognitive foundation, thinking traits, and psychological capital; the elements of research practice cover exploratory behavior, design behavior, and implementation behavior; and the elements of the academic ecosystem involve material support, cultural guidance, institutional incentives, and mentor guidance and support. In the interactions among these three aspects, the interaction between the academic ecosystem and research practice generates guiding elements, the interaction between research practice and academic subjects strengthens behavioral elements, and the interaction between the academic ecosystem and academic subjects shapes an innovative atmosphere. Through these interactions, the innovative ability of doctoral students is jointly shaped and enhanced. The cultivation of doctoral students’ innovative ability should be systematically advanced from three dimensions: individual empowerment, practice construction, and ecosystem optimization, to promote the coordinated development of innovative subjects, cognitive levels, behavioral patterns, and the external environment, and effectively stimulate the innovative potential and academic creativity of doctoral students.

The Industry-University Collaboration (IUC) mechanism serves as a critical to alleviate the structural contradictions in talent cultivation between supply and demand. Based on a mixed-methods research utilizing AI-driven large language models, this study systematically explores the current situation and restrictive factors of enterprises’ deep engagement in IUC. It finds that a structural contradiction lies in the asymmetry of IUC engagement. Qualitative text analysis finds that, this contradiction primarily stems from four restrictive factors: systemic delay of teaching and research productivity in university, absence of protection for industries’ rights, inadequacy of incentive mechanisms, and information flow bottlenecks. Quantitative analysis confirms that the above factors exert significant cooling effects on enterprises’ engagement in IUC. Addressing these challenges, it is necessary to break the constraints of the higher education evaluation system, clarify the enterprises’ rights and responsibilities in IUC, establish multi-dimensional incentive mechanisms, to stimulate enterprises’ enthusiasm and promote effective IUC.

In the era of digital transformation, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has become an important tool for enhancing research efficiency; however, its specific impact on research output remains underexplored. Based on survey data from the 2024 national doctoral graduate survey, this study investigates the effects of GenAI on the research output of doctoral students using propensity score matching and inverse probability weighted regression adjustment methods. The results indicate that GenAI usage increases doctoral students’ total research output by 6.5% and international publications by 6.9%. The effect is particularly prominent for publications in top-tier journals, with a net effect of 16.5%. However, factors such as gender and age constitute major barriers to GenAI adoption, limiting some doctoral students from reaping the full technological dividends. Furthermore, heterogeneity analysis reveals that the benefits of GenAI use vary significantly across different disciplines and academic environments. For doctoral students with insufficient mentor guidance, although GenAI promotes the output of the total number of papers and international publications, it fails to yield significant benefits for top-tier journal publications. Accordingly, this study recommends the systematic integration of GenAI into doctoral training systems, the development of intelligent resource-sharing platforms, and the strengthening of ethical norms and fairness safeguards. These measures aim to promote the rational application of the technology and the equitable sharing of digital dividends, thereby fostering the high-quality and sustainable development of doctoral education.

The concept of ademic status encompasses both scholarly classification of individuals within the academic community and the institutional stratification imposed by the state. Through case studies of national talent programs, this paper innovatively incorporates academic status into understanding China’s national academic governance, to examine how academic status influences the needs, motivations, and behaviors of university faculty through competitive selection criteria, interwoven recognition mechanisms, stepwise advancement processes, and comprehensive incentive systems. It shows that national talent programs are institutional designs that focus on the cognitive processes, decision-making psychology, and behavioral patterns of governance subjects. By shaping individual needs, motivations, and behaviors, these programs aim to achieve governance objectives through non-coercive, low-cost interest-driven and meaning-oriented approaches. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the diverse and continuous dynamic mechanisms shaping individual cognition and behaviors, while offering insights for the practice of academic governance.

This study takes “Double First-Class” construction universities as the research objects and employs the grounded theory method to reveal the actual decision-making process of optimization and adjustment of degree authorization points in universities. The study finds that the decision-making paths，within the framework of national regulation and provincial coordination, adhere to the principles of serving needs, promoting innovation, highlighting strengths, and ensuring quality. The institutional system exhibits an overall characteristic of primarily national regulation with school-based characteristics as a supplement.Additionally, universities establish a quality management mechanism characterized by “rigid constraint, flexible safeguard and dynamic feedback” effectively linking dynamic monitoring and evaluation results to support decisions. Based on the existing practical issues, the study proposes optimization strategies targeting “institutional improvement” “balance of interests” “disciplinary integration” and “data empowerment” from four dimensions “vertical integration” “horizontal collaboration” “networked resonance” and “foundational support”.

In accordance with the Ministry of Education’s work arrangements for implementing the Master Plan on Building China into a Leading Country in Education, the China Association of Higher Education (CAHE) organized a research advancement conference on construction a leading country in education. CAHE will uphold the mission of serving national strategic needs by deepening higher education research, building and refining a?collaborative innovation system, strengthening?organized research, fostering an?academic ethos of applying knowledge to practice, transforming research paradigms, and producing?high-quality innovative achievements. These efforts aim to support reform and development practices, pool resources, energize innovation, and contribute to the high-quality development of higher education. Through these actions, CAHE strives to better serve national strategies and advance the construction a leading country in education.