Driven by the development of new-quality productive forces and the accelerated digital transformation of education, engineering education is shifting from knowledge transmission and skills training toward the generation of complex engineering competencies. Drawing on constructivism, situated cognition, and connectivism, this paper constructs an S-T-E-I-M theoretical model for Future Learning Centers. Centered on subject empowerment, technological scaffolding, ecological connectivity, disciplinary integration, and model iteration, it formulates an operational mechanism of “subject-situation-network-problem-feedback”. The case of Harbin Engineering University shows that, leveraging its distinctive “Three Seas, One Nuclear” characteristic, the university translates this model into a practical engineering education ecosystem through smart-hub empowerment, a disciplinary-integration resource platform, industry–education alliances, and process-based evaluation. The key to a Future Learning Center lies not in spatial renovation or the stacking of technological applications, but in restructuring the relationships among students, knowledge, technology, resources, situations, and evaluation. The practices of project settlement, virtual–real integration, resource sharing, problem-driven learning, and process feedback hold value for broader dissemination and can serve as a reference for the construction of university Future Learning Centers and the digital transformation of engineering education.

Against the backdrop of digital transformation and AI-empowered education, digital literacy has become an important component of the core competencies of university students. Based on data from 2,125 university students, an interpretable machine learning model integrating XGBoost, SHAP, and Bayesian structural inference was constructed to examine the relationship between the dimensions of digital literacy and learning outcomes. The findings show that digital identity safety and responsibility had the highest predictive importance; information and data literacy mainly formed indirect pathways through digital collaboration and development and digital content creation; undergraduates were characterized by application-oriented associations with digital identity safety and responsibility and digital collaboration and development, while graduate students exhibited a more prominent chain-like association from information and data literacy to digital collaboration and development to digital content creation; for students in science, engineering, agriculture, and medicine, digital identity safety and responsibility and digital collaboration and development, whereas for students in humanities and social sciences, the association between digital content creation and learning outcomes was more evident. Accordingly, emphasis should be placed on digital identity safety and responsibility, a progressive training mechanism should be established, and a tiered training model should be implemented: an application-oriented model for undergraduates and a research-oriented model for graduate students, with experimental courses embedded for students in science, engineering, agriculture, and medicine and content creation as a breakthrough for humanities and social sciences.

Under conditions of inadequate formal institutional provision and stringent performance accountability, departments develop two risk-adjustment logics that can operate in combination. Organizational accountability risk-avoidance enactment seeks to reduce accountability risks through performance comparison and stringent assessment. By contrast, faculty development risk-buffering enactment seeks to mitigate faculty development risks through rule interpretation, flexible assessment, designated faculty mentoring, extensions of probationary appointments, and informal negotiation, thereby providing limited informal supplementation where formal developmental support is insufficient. Although departmental risk adjustment may temporarily alleviate institutional tensions through informal coordination, it may also shift institutional costs downward, redistribute risks, and lead to a partial ceding of academic evaluative authority, potentially shifting the system’s goals further toward short-term performance-based selection. Future reforms should translate faculty development goals into institutionalized support, establish stable mechanisms for information provision and risk sharing, and reconfigure institutional arrangements to better balance the dual objectives of faculty selection and development.

University scholarship allocation transforms judgments of “what counts as excellence” into resource disparities that, through repeated allocation, shape institutional order. This study reveals talent recognition and resource allocation as two analytical dimensions. Drawing on policy documents from 15 universities, 3,849 valid student questionnaires, and interview data, this research reveals two configurations across sampled universities: “pluralist–elite” and “pluralist–egalitarian.” Broader recognition of talent does not necessarily entail wider resource sharing. Students share a strong consensus that diverse talents deserve institutional recognition, yet they hold marked disagreements over the boundaries of justice in award distribution scope and resource gaps. The study therefore proposes three boundaries for macro-distributive justice: limiting the “horizontal convertibility” of advantage across evaluative domains, examining the implications of reward disparities for community belonging and relational order, and preventing the “vertical accumulation” of advantage through nested eligibility rules from restricting future competition. These boundaries seek to preserve students’ equal standing and opportunities for continued development.

For a long time, the stable operation of China’s province-based College Entrance Examination admission system has rested on several conditions: a broadly balanced scale and structure of the college-age population across provinces, continued growth in overall higher education enrollment, and relative stability in the spatial distribution of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and province-specific enrollment plans. However, with the onset of negative population growth, growing regional population differentiation is reshaping inter-provincial patterns of admission opportunities through the narrowing scope for incremental adjustment, the mismatch between HEI distribution and student distribution, delayed adjustments in local admission proportions, and changes in the underlying conditions of targeted admission programs, thereby creating new demands for institutional adaptation. Based on three indicators—fertility level, net migration rate, and the candidate-to-HEI ratio in China’s College Entrance Examination—this study develops a typological framework of inter-provincial demographic change and classifies provinces into three categories: “rapid contraction”, “steady decline”, and “relative stability”. This framework provides a basis for differentiated analysis of provincial adaptation needs within the admission system. The findings suggest that the province-based admission system can no longer rely primarily on the continuation of historical allocation patterns and incremental enrollment expansion to maintain its operation. Under the principle of educational equity, a more flexible allocation mechanism should therefore be gradually established, grounded in demographic forecasting, responsive to inter-provincial typological differences, and characterized by dynamic adjustment.

Artificial intelligence is profoundly reshaping the educational ecosystem and driving systemic transformation in higher education. “Change” and “continuity” have become defining issues in the high-quality development of higher education. In terms of its constituent elements, the objectives of higher education are shifting from knowledge transmission to competency-based development; teaching models are moving from one-way instruction to human–AI collaboration; learning approaches are transitioning from uniform pacing to personalized customization; resource allocation is evolving from inter-institutional closure to cross-sector sharing; and teacher–student relations are changing from one-way guidance to growth-oriented accompaniment. At the same time, higher education must uphold its fundamental value foundations, including fostering virtue through education, the core mission of talent cultivation, the essential laws of education, and the basic requirements of quality assurance. As the “baton” of educational reform, educational evaluation plays both guiding and safeguarding roles amid “change” and “continuity”. It is therefore necessary to enhance evaluation effectiveness through digital and intelligent empowerment, guide distinctive development through classified evaluation, advance reforms in talent cultivation models through professional accreditation, and support educational improvement through quality monitoring, so as to provide support for deepening educational evaluation reform and advancing the building of a leading country in education.

China initiated the advancement of university quality education in the mid-to-late 1990s, pioneering a distinctive Chinese educational development trajectory characterized by a progressive evolution from conceptual enlightenment to systematic construction, from curriculum-centered cultivation to all-dimensional educational immersion, and from scale expansion to connotative quality enhancement. Over the past three decades, in-depth theoretical exploration and iterative practical promotion have established a solid educational philosophical foundation anchored in “civilization inheritance and life self-awareness”, constructed a localized academic conceptual system centering on “all-round human development”, explored an innovative independent talent cultivation model featured by three-dimensional holistic education, consolidated the pedagogical cultural heritage rooted in fine traditional Chinese culture, and formulated an institutionalized development path underpinned by national policy guidance and platform-based support. These cumulative achievements have substantially facilitated the systematic construction of China’s independent pedagogical knowledge system. The theoretical construction of the independent knowledge system for university quality education is imperative to enhance practical, cultural, institutional and theoretical consciousness as well as open and inclusive theoretical construction, so as to take root in China’s educational context, respond to indigenous educational problems, summarize localized practical experience, and refine original Chinese educational theories.

The global higher education landscape in the 21st century is pluralising and multi-polarising. However, the conventional concept of the “world center of higher education” remains deeply entrenched in Western-centrism. This paper proposes “civilizational self-consciousness” as a core approach and constructs a three-stage progressive pathway for building a world center of higher education: “awareness of the self”, “awareness of the other”, and “mutual learning”. Awareness of the self emphasises grounding oneself in the ontological horizon of Chinese civilisation, elevating indigenous educational traditions from empirical material to analytical concepts, and thereby achieving a transformation from a dependent subject to an autonomous subject. Awareness of the other requires restoring Western higher education to its status as a product of a particular historical horizon, appreciating its contributions while critically examining its ontological limitations and hegemonic logic. Mutual learning points toward a fusion of horizons, advocating the mobilisation of ontological resources rooted in the Chinese concept of Tianxia (All-under-Heaven) to transcend the logic of nation-state competition and the center-periphery hegemonic structure, and to construct a new world higher education order characterised by pluralistic coexistence, knowledge justice, and mutual learning among civilizations.

Based on comprehensive employment data of higher vocational college graduates across China from 2019 to 2024, this study constructs a progressive spatial analytical framework organized around city tier and urban agglomeration to systematically examine the employment characteristics of graduates and the factors influencing their employment. The findings indicate that, after experiencing the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, graduate employment has gradually recovered and stabilized, yet significant divergence persists across city tiers. Overall, the local employment rate has exhibited a pronounced decline, signaling a shift from local retention toward regional mobility in graduate employment. Graduates across different urban agglomerations show marked differences in employment rate and income level. The proportion of dual-qualification full-time teachers and fiscal investment, together with educational investment, technological innovation capacity, and industrial development vitality, exert stable positive effects on the employment rate. To promote high-quality and full employment of higher vocational college graduates, it is necessary to stabilize and expand skilled employment according to city tier classifications, establish employment coordination mechanisms with urban agglomerations as the basic units, strengthen employment support for disadvantaged urban agglomerations, and optimize the allocation of key factor inputs.

Focusing on TAFE institutes, this study finds that the effective operation of industry-education integration in Australian vocational education is underpinned by coordinated mechanisms across three dimensions. At the level of core elements, industry-led curriculum development, reciprocal embedding between educational institutions and enterprises, and the development of dual-qualified teaching capacity constitute the fundamental structure of industry-education integration. At the level of implementation pathways, a rules-based governance framework establishes the institutional foundation through unified regulation and a national qualifications framework; market-oriented mechanisms reshape enterprise participation through financial incentives and cost-sharing arrangements; and digital transformation enables industry requirements and resources to be embedded earlier into the teaching and learning process. At the level of practical outcomes, a multidimensional evaluation framework has emerged, encompassing high-quality employment outcomes, recognition from students and parents, enterprise investment, and broader socioeconomic benefits. Drawing on the Australian experience, China may further strengthen horizontal coordination across its institutional framework, develop mechanisms for effective industry participation in curriculum renewal, improve incentives for deeper enterprise involvement in talent development, enhance mechanisms for cultivating dual-qualified teachers, and establish a multidimensional system for evaluating outcomes.

Teachers’ enterprise practice plays a vital role in advancing the in-depth integration of industry and education. At present, however, specialized-course teachers in higher vocational colleges still face numerous difficulties in participating in enterprise practice, and the micro-level processes underlying these difficulties have yet to be revealed. From the perspective of individual perception, taking specialized-course teachers from higher vocational colleges in Jiangsu Province as interviewees, this study adopts grounded theory to conduct qualitative research, identifying the key factors affecting teachers’ participation in enterprise practice and analyzing the mechanism among these factors. The study finds that teachers’ enterprise-practice dilemmas stem from insufficient capability, weakened willingness, and deficient energy, which respectively shape whether teachers “are able to” participate effectively, “are willing to” engage deeply, and “have the energy to” sustain their involvement. To promote high-quality participation in enterprise practice among specialized-course teachers in higher vocational colleges, breakthrough strategies should be implemented in three areas: competence empowerment, identity construction, and institutional support.