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.

China’s talent cultivation models demonstrate typological diversity and complex evolutionary paths. From the dual tension perspective of “local-international” and “traditional-innovative”, the talent cultivation models of Chinese universities can be identified as four ideal types: “international academic inheritance”, “international innovation leading”, “local cultural preservation” and “local innovation priority”. These types have a dynamic, interactive evolution driven by multiple factors such as disciplinary development needs and national policy guidance. Talent cultivation models in Chinese universities should balance global competition and local adaptation, as well as knowledge accumulation and innovative breakthroughs, to achieve the functional and strategic positioning of China’s higher education development.

Breaking the “Western path dependence” in cultivating top-notch innovative talents and establishing an independent cultivation mechanism for top-notch innovative talents with Chinese characteristics have become key breakthroughs in achieving high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and self-strengthening. To promote the independent cultivation of top-notch innovative talents in China, it is necessary to further rationalize the theoretical logic of policy support, so as to achieve the enhancement of autonomy from “external introduction” to “strengthening self-sufficiency”, the innovative positioning from “passive catching up” to “leading the sprint”, and the differentiated development from “uniformity” to “precise classification”. However, in the practical process, there are still many difficulties in relevant policy support, including homogenization of support, insufficient attention to the differences among different types of talents; intermittent support, the policy continuity throughout the entire process of talent cultivation needs to be improved; fragmented support, the collaborative education synergy among multiple subjects is insufficient; passive support, the dynamic mechanism of independent innovation is not sound. To promote the adaptation of relevant policies, we must adhere to the thinking of precise governance, and facilitate the diversified development of top-notch innovative talents through classified support, integrated support, collaborative support, and special support.

Article 37(3) of the Academic Degrees Law serves as a catch-all provision for revoking academic degrees, covering both academic and non-academic grounds. By linking revocation grounds to the conditions required for initial degree conferment, the clause allows any breach of those conditions to potentially trigger revocation proceedings. However, actual revocation is warranted only when the conduct constitutes a “serious violation”. For academic misconduct, a “serious violation” must satisfy all three criteria: (a) the conduct falls within a category that university rules deem disqualifying for degree conferment; (b) the offending research output has been publicly disseminated; and (c) the conduct involves ghost-writing, plagiarism, or other forms of academic dishonesty of comparable severity. Serious non-academic breaches involve violations of the political or moral prerequisites for degree conferment. A serious political breach must constitute a crime of a political nature under the Criminal Law. A serious moral breach must violate either the Criminal Law or the Public Security Administration Punishments Law and be morally reprehensible. Crucially, revocation is justified only when such misconduct infringes upon the legal interests protected by the Academic Degrees Law, as manifested by causing significant negative social impact or seriously damaging the university’s reputation.

Institution-building and refinement are pivotal to achieving the modernization of higher education governance. Based on the analysis of the modernization of higher education governance and its significance, as well as the theoretical interpretation of institutional concepts, this paper elucidates the logical nexus between institutions and higher education governance. It then discusses the modernization actions of higher education governance based on institutional rationality from three perspectives: governance entities in higher education must strengthen rational understanding of the institutional importance in governance; governments must enhance fundamental institutional construction conducive to the modernization of macro-governance; and universities must improve institutional frameworks that return to their essential attributes and core missions.

Relying on artificial intelligence and other technological means, smart education has not only transformed the use of teaching tools in higher education but also revolutionized the entire spectrum of higher education including educational concepts, teaching methods, and even the educational form. However, the rapid development of technology has given rise to a practical dilemma in higher education research where technological advancements outpace the establishment of a clear pedagogical theoretical foundation. This situation manifests in three specific challenges: ideological conflicts between technology-driven paradigms and education-centric principles; integration difficulties in pedagogical model transformation; assessment mechanism hysteresis. This study therefore proposes a theoretical framework integrating cross-disciplinary insights to explore the pedagogical foundations of smart education applications in higher education. We construct a complex ecosystem for smart education that is:philosophically grounded in educational paradigms, operationally implemented through pedagogical models, spatially enabled by learning environments, innovatively driven by research methodologies, sustainably oriented toward green education initiatives. This system provides a theoretical basis for intelligent technologies to realize the educational concept of “large-scale personalization”, the teaching management model of “data-driven instruction”, the learning scenario of “all-time, all-space, and all-knowledge learning”, and the research paradigm of “human-machine intelligent collaborative innovation”, thereby achieving sustained, effective and healthy development of higher education.

Global development strategy plays a pivotal role in the construction of world-class university. The global development strategy of world-class university is a systematic guiding framework for world-class university to formulate and implement their development goals, national strategic needs and global well-being growth through systematic planning of vivid practices under the synergistic effect of value rationality and instrumental rationality under the background of globalization. The strategy should exhibit inherent characteristics such as legitimacy, systematicness, dynamism, locality, symbolism, and openness, which permeate all stages of strategy formulation, implementation, and feedback. The specific pathways for their formulation and implementation encompass four key aspects: scanning development contexts to identify opportunities and challenges, clarifying university missions and leveraging strategic guidance, optimizing operation system and improving organizational efficiency, and implementing dynamic feedback to form a closed-loop evaluation system.

The “student-centered” teaching management of undergraduate colleges and universities adheres to the center of students’ development, and promotes the realization of the main value of students, meets the learning needs of students and pays attention to the learning effect of students. Through the “triangular mutual evidence”, the study summarizes it into six dimensions, 29 elemental indicators, and takes the students of eight undergraduate colleges and universities in Jiangsu Province as the object to carry out the survey of “students’ needs in teaching management of undergraduate colleges and universities”, and uses the KANO model to analyze and optimize the method to calculate the Better-Worse coefficients of the corresponding indexes, and disperses the indexes in the establishment of a two-dimensional quadrant diagram. Based on this, it is proposed to solve the “urgency”, prioritize to meet the necessary needs of students for teaching management, pay attention to the “hope”, focus on improving the expectations of students for teaching management, and alleviate the “difficult worries”, and optimize students’ charismatic demand for teaching management in a targeted manner.

Significant achievements have been made in commercializing scientific and technological (S&T) achievements in Chinese universities. However, on the incentive mechanism, it needs to be seriously summarized in the experience and practices of reform and innovation, so as to further improve relevant policies, and accelerate the reform of three systems, such as individual column management of the transformation of service S&T advances, the evaluation of technology transfer talents and professional titles, and the investment of residual funds from horizontal scientific research projects for the transformation of S&T advances. The incentive mechanism reform of S&T advances transformation should be further people-oriented, such as asset management should pay more attention to the special characteristics of intangible assets by S&T advances, evaluation reform should further strengthen categorized assessment, horizontal research funding reform should further expand the autonomy of S&T personnel, and comprehensive reform of universities should further unclog blockages of incentive mechanism, so as to effectively solve the problems of some universities and their accomplisher of S&T advances being afraid to transfer, unwilling to transfer, and lacking funds to transfer.

编者按：创新之教育培养创造之人才，创造之人才造就创新之国家。面对新一轮科技革命和产业革命，《中共中央关于进一步全面深化改革、推进中国式现代化的决定》和中共中央、国务院印发的《教育强国建设规划纲要（2024—2035年）》中均提出“强化科技教育和人文教育协同”，完善拔尖创新人才发现和培养机制。科技教育与人文教育协同发展是大学素质教育思想的重要内涵。为全面深化素质教育，推动新时代高等教育高质量发展，构建拔尖创新人才自主培养体系，中国高等教育学会大学素质教育研究分会、智慧教育研究分会联合《中国高教研究》编辑部以“科技教育与人文教育协同发展”为主题组织笔谈，精选文章，以飨读者。

By analyzing relevant documents from 36 initial pilot universities, this paper summarizes the current state of transition operations from two perspectives: “how to transit” and “where to transit”. The findings indicate that pilot universities have developed unique transition methods that align with policy requirements and their own contexts. However, there is a need to guard against oversimplifying the transition. Although diverse transition pathways are offered within policy constraints, there is still a need to enhance the guidance of students’ development choices. While the importance of effective linkage between academic stages is recognized, a complete plan for subsequent training is yet to be established. Universities should integrate selection and cultivation in the transition process, deepen the exploration of multi-path, highly adaptive transition practices based on disciplinary characteristics and talent cultivation principles, strengthen coordination among relevant entities, ensuring good quality in every step.

In the process of transformation of China’s science and technology from “following” to “leading”, the impact of laboratory research direction on the training of doctoral students needs urgent attention. Based on the mixed case study, it is found that when the laboratories conduct pioneering research, doctoral students can develop cutting-edge-oriented creativity, but the risk of failure of pioneering research is extremely high, and once failed, doctoral students can’t be able to obtain academic performance; when the laboratories conduct exploratory research, doctoral students can also develop innovative capability, but it is difficult to ensure academic performance; when the laboratories conduct routine research, it is difficult for doctoral students to fully develop innovative capability, but they can achieve high academic performance. Under the excessive performance-oriented talent evaluation and selection system, doctoral students who don’t fully develop innovative capability are more likely to be selected. Accordingly, the excessive performance-oriented selection criteria should be eliminated, the innovative value should be taken as the basic guide in selecting and evaluating reserve talents, and the project funding should be appropriately leaned towards doctoral students engaging in pioneering and exploratory research.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) among college instructors is vital for advancing teaching and learning reforms and enhancing the quality of talent cultivation. However, in practice, many instructors’ intentions for SoTL often fail to translate into actions, resulting in an “strong intention-weak behavior divergence”. This study, based on interviews with 21 college instructors, explores the formation, divergence, and evolution of their intentions and behaviors in SoTL. The findings indicate that instructors’ intentions for SoTL are driven by a combination of perception of SoTL, value assessment, and perceived behavioral control. However, SoTL behaviors are not solely a product of intentions, as stronger barriers than motivators, inadequate SoTL planning, and unfavorable contextual cues contribute to the intention-behavior divergence. Instructors’ intentions and behaviors in SoTL evolve dynamically in response to changes in contextual cues. Institutions can optimize contextual cues that are directive, exemplary, resource-driven, and individualized, to help instructors translate their SoTL intentions into actionable plans for meaningful engagement.

Based on the perspective of economic network analysis, this study systematically defines the theoretical connotation of a globally influential education center, proposing a potential transition from single-center model to multi-center model. The evolutionary process of emerging centers may give rise to new configurations of education centers, which represent the target form for elevating China’s development of education center. The study posits that a novel worldview in education, by guiding the transformation of educational paradigms, provides a philosophical foundation for these new configurations. Through analyzing domestic and international trends in educational development and open cooperation practices, the research reveals both opportunities and challenges in constructing such centers. Building on this analysis, the study discusses policy pathways to propel progress, including deepening international educational collaborations and communications by adhering to a neo-worldview in education; improving institutional mechanisms to empower talent cultivation through “inbound” and “outbound” strategies; and modernizing governance systems and capabilities for foreign-related education security.

Building a self-reliant and excellence-oriented higher education system constitutes a crucial strategic task in advancing the development of an education powerhouse during the new era. To effectively implement this strategic deployment and achieve tangible outcomes, it is essential to accurately comprehend the connotation and defining features of a self-reliant and excellence-driven higher education system, clarify its connections with both a high-quality higher education system and the leading role of higher education, grasp the internal logic between this system and the “six distinctive characteristics” and “eight major systems” of an education powerhouse, recognize the current circumstances and challenges in constructing it, and define actionable strategies for advancement.

The project-based system has taken shape in the long-term practice of key construction in China’s higher education. It has the advantages of national purposiveness and open competitiveness, and has effectively promoted the leapfrog development of China’s higher education undertakings since the 1990s. From a legal perspective, project-based governance in higher education originates from the concept of contract in public administration and possesses the legal attributes of administrative contracts. Based on this orientation, there are two paths for the legalization of project-based governance in higher education. Firstly, it is necessary to regulate the rights and obligations between administrative authorities and universities/teachers on the basis of administrative contracts, ensuring that administrative agencies possess administrative prerogatives while also fulfilling their obligations to protect the legitimate expectations of universities and teachers. Secondly, it is vital to adhere to the fundamental principles of administrative law, including the principles of administration according to law and due process.

Each theory is persuasive only within the limits of scale. The scale of social science theories includes internal and external scale. The internal scale represents the boundary of the research object and its extensibility in the conceptual sense, and the external scale represents the time-space boundary within which the theory maintains persuasiveness. A correct understanding of scale is the basis for understanding the true value of a theory. Martin Trow’s theory of stages of higher education development as an example, has been misinterpreted in terms of the theory’s internal scale, leading to a misunderstanding of the boundary between quantitative and qualitative changes in higher education development; due to the neglect of the external scale, the original theory has formed numerous derivative theories in its transmission. The internal scale of a theory determines the perspective of understanding, and the external scale determines the generality and specificity of the theory. The construction of higher education theories should not avoid the ideal scale, and researchers should actively participate in the construction of a general theory of higher education under a larger external scale.

China has long been facing an imbalance between the supply and demand of engineers of excellence, and this contradiction between supply and demand is intuitively reflected in the difference between the university and the enterprise on the literacy of engineers of excellence. In this paper, by collecting 7914 recruitment information of engineers from enterprises on the BOSS Zhipin website and selecting the training objectives of engineering majors of some representative universities, we use text analysis to compare the differences in cognitive demands for the literacy of excellent engineering talents between the supply side of universities and the demand side of enterprises, and explores the causes of these differences. The study found that insufficient communication incentives, selective implementation, and information asymmetry etc. between universities and enterprises exacerbated the cognitive gap between the two sides on the literacy of excellence engineers. In order to bridge the cognitive gap and enhance the effectiveness of cultivation of engineers of excellence, it is necessary to break the traditional principal-agent identities of universities and enterprises and broaden the role boundaries of the main body of talent cultivation; reconfigure the university-enterprise discourse context and improve the standardized system of organic convergence between professional certification and qualification certification; integrate the core literacy of engineers of excellence and promote the coordinated division of labor in multiple principal-agent relationships.

Subject reform is the core and difficulty of the new round of college entrance examination reform. Based on the Entropy Weight TOPSIS model, this paper evaluates the differences in the evaluation index data of the subject reform of the new college entrance examination in various provinces. The research shows that there are great differences in the evaluation of the implementation of the new college entrance examination curriculum among different groups in different provinces. There is a certain correlation between the differences in the ranking of subject selection evaluation in each province and the batch arrangement of the new college entrance examination. Subjective norms are the main obstacle factors affecting the subject selection evaluation of student groups in each province, and family influence is the main influencing indicator. Behavioral attitude and perceived behavioral control are the main obstacle factors affecting the subject selection evaluation of teacher groups in each province, and the overall satisfaction with the subject selection system, as well as students' professional development and career planning, are the main influencing indicators. In order to deepen the reform of college entrance examination subjects, we should formulate a topic selection guidance scheme suitable for regional educational ecology, improve the fair and priority allocation mechanism of educational resources, and promote the accurate allocation of regional educational resources, constructing the whole chain of home-school community construction and education cooperation ecology and other promotion strategies.