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.

Talents are the “primary resource” for the high-quality development of the economy and society. The extension of the talent cultivation chain from school education to the selection and recruitment in the labor market determines that the corresponding student evaluation and employment evaluation should be recognized and defined in the relationship. By using relational thinking to examine existing problems, we can see that the connection of the two “five-only” problems stems from the external promotion of school evaluation and employer evaluation and the internal limitation of evaluation theories and evaluation resources, which is a vicious interaction in which concept dimension falls into passive dominance and practice dimension falls into forced compromise. Therefore, the key to solving the “five factors” problem of student evaluation and employee evaluation is to reconstruct the discrete cycle relationship between them, that is, based on the evaluation ontology elements, to reconstruct the evaluation content relationship of “dual-center” radiation connection, the evaluation subject relationship of “five subjects” cross-border cooperation, and the evaluation system relationship of “two interfaces” integration and mutual promotion. In the future, we should grasp the system, subject and medium elements required for the reconstruction of the relationship between student evaluation and employee evaluation, improve the upper and lower institutional system, optimize the rationality of group and individual actions, and perfect the virtual and practical cooperative media, so as to realize the improvement and reorganization of the two major evaluation of high-level connection, old linkage, cross-border connection elements.

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.

In the face of the external pressure of the transformation of the digital society, and the internal requirements of the innovation and development of higher education, UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) launched a digital well-being oriented “Digital Capabilities Framework”. This framework set out professional solutions to improving the digital capabilities for students, teachers, administrators and others in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) from both individual and organisational perspectives. To effectively enhance the overall digital capacity building of HEIs, JISC gave full play to the synergistic development of professional development standards and digital competence frameworks, and integrated digital competence development activities into the teaching and learning and administrative management of HEIs. An overview of the introduction and implementation of the JISC digital capabilities framework revealed distinctive features that focuses on the growth needs of all people, while paying attention to the individual needs of stakeholders. In the process of digital transformation, we should build digital capabilities, re-examine the relationship between technology and people, and rethink the integration of technology and 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.

In the context of the continuous evolution of the intelligent society, universities urgently need to cultivate the artificial intelligence literacy of college students to provide intellectual support and human resources for this intelligent trend. As a world-class university, Carnegie Mellon University takes artificial intelligence knowledge, artificial intelligence emotion, and artificial intelligence thinking as the content, and relies on artificial intelligence general education, artificial intelligence minor and additional major, artificial intelligence scientific research projects to cultivate the artificial intelligence literacy of college students, so as to meet the sustainable development needs of students and the intelligent society. The practical experience of cultivating students’ artificial intelligence literacy at Carnegie Mellon University provides a reference for the cultivation practice and research of college students’ artificial intelligence literacy with its comprehensive, systematic, scientifically forward - looking contents, a cultivation system that implements measurement and training according to different categories, a people-oriented cultivation concept, and an educational ecosystem featuring interdisciplinary cooperation and integration of industry, education, research, and application.

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.

This study investigates the impact and mechanisms of extending the academic duration for professional master’s students on their employment quality, utilizing data from the “China Graduate Education Quality Survey Project” covering 2021-2023 graduates. The findings reveal that prolonging the academic system significantly enhances graduates’ starting salaries and job satisfaction, while showing no significant effect on employment placement rates. Mechanism analysis demonstrates that practical mentor guidance, academic research supervision, internship duration, and study hours partially mediate these effects, with internship duration contributing the largest proportion of mediating effects. Additionally, the study identifies differential impacts across variables including extension duration, academic disciplines, institutional tiers, and employment sectors. Based on these conclusions, policy recommendations are proposed, including implementing differentiated academic duration policies, strengthening practical teaching and mentorship systems, and promoting personalized training programs, aiming to enhance the quality of professional master’s education and graduate employment outcomes.

Overseas school-running is an important dimension to measure the international development of vocational colleges, and it is also an important path to practice the internationalization of Chinese education. Based on the internationalization development index data of 1150 vocational colleges in 30 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in China, this paper aims to explore the facts, problems, and optimization of Chinese vocational education running schools overseas. Firstly, the research finds that domestic vocational colleges’ overseas school-running is developing continuously, the standard output is becoming more significant, and the teachers’ overseas assignment is increasing. Secondly, there are also shortcomings in the aspects of overseas school-running ability, policy support, international integration of majors, international quality of teachers and balanced overseas vocational education. Finally, it is suggested to improve the top-level system design, increase policy support, attach importance to the construction of the standard system, smooth internal and external communication channels, and optimize the allocation of educational resources to optimize the development of overseas school-running, and build the leading country in education.

With the in-depth implementation of the “Belt and Road” Initiative, it is an important way to effectively integrate resources and improve the internationalization level of Chinese vocational education to build a school-enterprise collaborative “going out” community of higher vocational education. Based on the perspective of symbiosis theory, the elements of the school-enterprise collaborative “going out” school-running community of higher vocational colleges include three parts: symbiotic unit, symbiotic environment and symbiotic mode. At present, there are difficulties in this community construction, such as weakness of the main role, absence of institutional cultural environment, and sluggish internal operation mode. In the future, we should realize the long-term and stability of the cooperation between higher vocational colleges and enterprises by deepening the symbiotic unit, enhancing the complementary advantages of the subject, improving the symbiotic environment, laying the foundation of the coordination of the subject, optimizing the symbiosis mode, and promoting the two-way interaction between the subject and enterprises.