Based on a multidisciplinary perspective, the similarities and differences between growth and development as well as their measurement methods were discussed, and the concept of higher education development was analyzed. Common development indicator systems, such as the Human Development Index (HDI), Social Progress Index (SPI), Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as Global Innovation Index (GII), Oslo Manual, European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), World Competitiveness Yearbook (WCY), and Global Soft Power Rankings, were introduced, along with measurement indicators and results for educational development, and changes in China’s development were also examined. The design rationale, indicator screening and analytical framework for the two primary indicators, eight secondary indicators, and twenty-four observing indicators of the Higher Education Development Index (HEDI) were discussed, as well as data collection, processing, and calculation methods. Recommendations were proposed for result interpretation, public literacy enhancement, and sustained research commitment of HEDI.

Constructing a World Higher Education Development Index oriented toward the core connotation of building a leading country in higher education is essential for identifying China’s level of higher education development and its position within the global higher education system. This requires an index framework and empirical assessment that are both grounded in Chinese characteristics and internationally comparable. Based on an analysis from theoretical, practical, and policy perspectives, this study conceptualizes the core connotation of a leading country in higher education along two dimensions: the development level of higher education and its service contribution. Through further decomposition of these dimensions and selection of specific indicators, the study constructs a World Higher Education Development Index consisting of 2 first-level indicators, 8 second-level indicators, and 24 observation points. Calculations show that global higher education development presents a multipolar pattern, and China performs prominently among populous countries, since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China’s higher education has achieved steady advancement and leapfrog development, making historic progress. However, gaps remain between China and leading higher education countries in hierarchical structure, resource conditions, social development, and international influence. In the future, the indicator system, data foundation, and application mechanism should be continuously optimized to strengthen the role of the index as a decision-making reference for higher education development.

The evaluation of national higher education development is an urgently needed research field of considerable theoretical and practical value. Rigorous assessment of higher education’s status and level, is imperative not only for China’s endeavor to build a leading country in education, but also as a shared global concern. Through a systematic review of international experience, this study identifies three dominant evaluative structures—nested, inclusive, and independent, each positioning higher education differently. These evaluations shows that national higher education increasingly embedded in social development assessments, its multi-dimensional value gradually visible. Yet its systematic coherence and autonomy remain weak, and evaluative frameworks attuned to its unique developmental features are still lacking. In view of this, the paper draws on the World Higher Education Development Index’s formulation to propose deeper research into evaluative positioning, indicator selection, and assessment methodology, thereby grounding the index’s future advancement and refinement.

Advancing university classification evaluation carries the strategic mission of building a leading country in education and serves as a key pathway for reforming higher education governance mechanisms. Through scientific evaluation, classification systems guide universities in precise positioning, structural optimization, and internal motivation enhancement, thereby addressing the “homogenization” dilemma and driving higher education toward connotative, distinctive, and high-quality development. Currently, profound inherent tensions exist between the value objectives of university classification evaluation and its practical implementation, manifested in three major challenges: insufficient classification criteria, homogenized evaluation indicators, and distorted functional orientations. It is essential to fully leverage policy momentum for classification development, strengthen evaluation system construction to stimulate diversified institutional potential, develop evaluation tools that reflect institutional characteristics, and improve outcome application mechanisms to enhance evaluation effectiveness. These measures will effectively guide higher education from “scale expansion” to “quality-driven specialization”, ultimately achieving the goal of establishing a high-quality higher education system.

Based on Actor-Network Theory, a qualitative case study of 13 new research institutions at domestic universities conducting graduate education revealed that multi-party collaborative education embedded in these institutions begins by breaking free from path dependencies such as university dominance, rigid scenarios, and project-driven approaches. It identifies diverse interest demands, including regional innovation ecosystem construction, efficiency improvement in technology transfer, and cross-boundary resource acquisition and sharing. Through administrative recruitment, market recruitment, and social recruitment, it constructs heterogeneous actor networks, ultimately forming research education mechanisms driven by industrial issues, practical education mechanisms deeply embedded in incubation platforms, and ideological-political education mechanisms integrating local culture. On this basis, the New-type Research and Development Institutions of Universities, as substantive organizations, further employ a meaning transformation mechanism from collaborative innovation to collaborative education, a principal-agent mechanism intertwined with differentiation and integration strategies, a knowledge integration mechanism spanning disciplines, fields, and levels, and a result feedback mechanism combining formal and informal evaluations. Through these mechanisms, they enable multi-party collaborative education to maintain a dynamic equilibrium while continuously dissolving the cognitive conflicts and behavioral dilemmas of heterogeneous actors.

This paper takes Shandong Province’s Major Project for the Transformation of Old and New Growth Drivers as a quasi-natural experiment. Based on the panel data of invention patents from regular undergraduate universities across ten Chinese provinces from 2014 to 2023, it adopts the Propensity Score Matching combined with Difference-in-Differences (PSM-DID) method. From four dimensions, namely the intensity of university-enterprise cooperation, the content of collaborative research, the quantity of universities’ scientific research outputs, and the content of universities’ independent research, this study systematically explores the impacts of regional industrial upgrading policies on universities’innovation activities. The research results are as follows. First, industrial upgrading policies have significantly increased the proportion of university-enterprise cooperative invention patents among universities’ granted patents, while exerting no noticeable effect on the total number of university patents. This indicates that the policies have effectively strengthened universities’willingness to carry out collaborative R&D in response to industrial demands. Second, the policies have remarkably reduced the industrial concentration of university-enterprise cooperative patents. It suggests that the joint innovation activities between universities and enterprises are no longer confined to a small number of key fields, but have expanded to a broader range of industrial sectors. Third, the policies show no significant influence on the industrial concentration of patents independently filed by universities, proving that the policy effects have clear boundaries. These findings demonstrate that industrial upgrading policies not only determine whether universities engage in industrial cooperation, but also profoundly shape the orientation and content of their collaborative research.

Transition efficacy is a core metric for the Pilot Reform Program of Enrollment for Basic Disciplines(PRPEBD). Focusing on the divergence between students’ enrollment motivations and their post-graduation destinations under the Pilot Reform Program of Enrollment for Basic Disciplines, this study conducts an empirical analysis based on follow-up survey data from two cohorts of participants at a pilot university, examining how initial enrollment motivations influence students’ ultimate career trajectories by shaping their intellectual, behavioral, aspirational, and interest-oriented development during their university years. Results show that pathways are highly congruent with motivations: “interest-driven” students transition at significantly higher rates than their “prestige-driven” counterparts. Mediation analysis reveals that this effect is channeled through professional interest, academic performance, and career aspirations, while research participation remains insignificant. These findings suggest that selection should better identify intrinsic motivation and academic interest, and that cultivation should shift from outcome-oriented assessment to process-oriented development to promote substantive rather than merely formal transition.

Drawing on the theory of disruptive innovation proposed by Clayton M. Christensen and the paradigm theory of Thomas S. Kuhn, this paper distinguishes two types of top innovative talents: sustaining and disruptive. The former pursue excellence within established paradigms, while the latter challenge and reconstruct them. Their identification and selection rely on different cognitive reference frames and thus follow distinct logics. Sustaining talents demonstrate strong puzzle-solving abilities within a paradigm and fit recognized, structured selection frameworks. Disruptive talents show sensitivity to anomalies and the capacity to explore new value networks, requiring specialized and protective selection mechanisms. Current systems tend to favor sustaining talents, while disruptive talents are difficult to identify and select. Accordingly, this paper proposes establishing selection zones independent of mainstream value networks, shifting evaluation toward recognizing heterogeneity and tolerating failure, constructing dynamic evaluation mechanisms throughout the cultivation process, and embedding continuous institutional meta-evaluation and adjustment.

Practice-oriented talent cultivation in Universities is a crucial measure to implement the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education, and serves as a key component of talent cultivation. Based on longitudinal data of first-year students from a “Double First-Class” construction university, this study employs difference-in-differences (DID) and other analytical methods to explore the specific impacts of social practice participation on students’ growth and development. The findings reveal that educational factors (e.g., high school and university education experiences) significantly influence students’ participation in social practice, while the role of family background factors is not statistically significant, indicating relatively equitable participation opportunities. Participation in social practice is conducive to students’ growth and development, with a particularly prominent learning-promoting effect—academic satisfaction significantly increases by 3.4%. Different types of social practice exhibit heterogeneous impacts, ideological and political practice projects can effectively reduce students’ perceived stress.

The four-year engineering technology education (ETE) in the United States. shares remarkable similarities with the vocational undergraduate engineering technology education in China. While ETE is oriented toward cultivating engineering technologists, the labor market presents a starkly different reality. The ambiguous distinction between engineering technologists and engineers has caused many ETE graduates to compete with engineering graduates for similar positions. Additionally, vested interest groups often display professional protectionism, erecting institutional barriers for ETE graduates aspiring to obtain professional engineer licensure. Furthermore, the diminished emphasis on mathematics and science, coupled with the rapid pace of technological change, has led to a remarkable trend of shorter career lifespan in technical roles among ETE graduates. These factors collectively constrain the long-term expansion of ETE in the United States. China should define the objective of vocational undergraduate ETE as application engineers, promote the effective alignment between ETE and the professional engineer licensure system, and strengthen mathematics and science courses.

Japan achieved a concentrated emergence of Nobel Prize-winning achievements in the natural sciences within a relatively short period after World War II, making its talent cultivation model and scientific research system of significant research value. Taking Japanese Nobel laureates in the natural sciences as the research subjects, this study systematically examines their educational experiences, academic development trajectories, and research backgrounds. The findings reveals that several prominent characteristics in the growth paths of Japanese Nobel laureates: the production of Nobel Prize-winning achievements is closely related to national science and technology policies; laureates generally benefited from diversified and long-term research funding; talent cultivation and research achievements were mainly concentrated in Japan’s top universities; most laureates possessed international learning and collaboration experiences; interdisciplinary backgrounds and cross-sector mobility were common; and scientific interests were often cultivated and continuously developed from adolescence. Based on these findings and in light of China’s current context, this study proposes several policy implications, including establishing a long-term and stable research environment, strengthening independent talent cultivation and university-industry collaboration, promoting interdisciplinary integration and internationalized training, and improving the scientific education system.

How vocational colleges can systematically construct a technical and skill-based innovation system and undertake the new era mission of technical and skill-based innovation is an important proposition for vocational education to integrate into the strategic deployment of the “integrated development of education, science and technology, and talent”. Based on educational ecology theory and collaborative innovation theory, this study builds a “multi-stakeholder collaborative” technical and skill-based innovation system model, establishes relevant supporting mechanisms, and ensures its dynamic operation. It proposes practical pathways including opening up the transformation channel from problem identification to project implementation, building a hybrid collaboration system of platforms and teams, and improving the circular network of achievement transformation and revenue feedback. These pathways aim to facilitate the effective connection of technical and skill-based innovation with key links in the national innovation chain.