Following the scale expansion during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Chinese higher education has entered the mid-to-late stage of universalization and now stands at a critical turning point from scale expansion to quality enhancement, from discipline-centered development to national-mission orientation, and from uniform evaluation to classified governance. This paper argues that China’s current challenges are not merely technical problems of management but structural tensions arising from the transition toward a high-participation higher education system. The most pressing issues include institutional barriers to interdisciplinary development, blurred positioning among local application-oriented universities, structural mismatches between talent supply and industrial demand, and the persistence of the “Five-Only” evaluation orientation. Classified development and differentiated evaluation should therefore serve as the central policy lever for the 15th Five-Year Plan period. An agile mechanism for discipline adjustment, an internally driven quality assurance system, and stronger integration of education, science and talent are needed to transform China’s higher education system from scale advantage to substantive strength.

Establishing a scientific categorization-based evaluation system for higher education institutions constitutes the institutional foundation for building a leading country in higher education. Exploring reforms in construction performance evaluation that facilitate “Double First-Class” construction universities to focus on the goal of world-class universities is not only a requirement of the “categorization-based evaluation reform for higher education institutions”, but also a crucial means to guide China’s “Double First-Class” construction universities to consciously serve the national strategy for scientific and technological innovation and enhance their own international competitiveness. Based on a discussion and understanding of the importance of categorization-based evaluation and categorized development models for higher education institutions, as well as their logical interconnections, and following an elaboration on the interpretation of world-class universities and the “two autonomies” mission and responsibility of “Double First-Class”construction universities, this paper proposes that the design of performance evaluation for “Double First-Class” university construction must adhere to three principles: first, to guide “Double First-Class” construction universities toward “improving the quality of independent talent cultivation and producing top-notch innovative talents”; second, to enable them to make outstanding contributions to the nation’s “high-level self-reliance and self-strengthening in science and technology and enhancement of independent innovation capability”; and third, to advance the “modernization of internal university governance”. On this basis, the paper delves into, synthesizes and articulates the key evaluation dimensions and their constituent elements for constructing a construction performance evaluation system for “Double First-Class” university from three major directions: “cultivation of top-notch innovative talents”, “contributions to scientific and technological innovation and research and development（R&D）”, and “modernization of internal university governance.”

Promoting the classified development of higher education institutions is key to addressing homogenization, and the alignment between funding allocation and institutional categorization directly affects reform outcomes. Based on 2016-2025 data from 60 universities, this study reveals significant imbalance and typological differentiation in China’s higher education funding: research-oriented universities dominate in scale, with a pronounced “Matthew effect” across the three institutional types; while research-oriented universities enjoy more diverse revenue sources and greater expenditure flexibility, expenditure structures remain largely convergent across all types. The underlying causes include outdated fiscal appropriation models, diversi?ed financing mechanisms that widen resource gaps, rigid expenditure structures that constrain distinctive development, and a unitary evaluation system that encourages inefficient homogeneity. To address these issues, a differentiated funding mechanism should be established: refining classified appropriation to match institutional missions, enhancing financing mechanisms to boost institutional self-generation, optimizing expenditure frameworks to create room for differentiation, and strengthening the evaluation-funding nexus to steer universities toward distinctive development.

China’s high-level research universities are core components of the national strategic scientific and technological strength. However, the technology transfer rate of university scientific and technological achievements remains low, and the transfer cycle is protracted, resulting in insufficient release of innovation value. University-industry collaboration is widely regarded as a critical pathway to cross the “valley of death”, yet its impact on technology transfer outcomes, underlying mechanisms, and optimal organizational forms still lack large-sample empirical support. Based on empirical analysis of over 610 000 patent transfer records from 42 “Double First-Class”construction universities, our findings show that university-industry collaboration significantly enhances the quantity, quality, and speed of technology transfer. The enterprise-led model, deep collaboration, and strong partnerships between universities and leading science and technology enterprises are particularly effective in unlocking synergistic value. University-industry collaboration promotes the transition of research outcomes from the scientific realm to the industrial sector by improving technological advancement, technological depth, legal stability, and commercial value. We recommend strengthening enterprise-led collaborative innovation, establishing long-term and stable university-industry cooperation mechanisms, leveraging the leading role of science and technology flagship enterprises, and facilitating a paradigm shift in university technology transfer from “output-oriented” to “demand-driven”.

Interdisciplinary approaches are an important means to drive scientific research innovation and address complex issues. However, the current situation of interdisciplinary studies in Chinese universities and their relationship with scientific research innovation remain unclear. Based on a survey of faculty members in State Key Laboratories (SKLs), this study examines faculty members’ interdisciplinarity at the stages of knowledge production and knowledge dissemination, as well as its relationship with research innovation. The findings show that faculty members in SKLs have experienced a significant increase in interdisciplinarity at the knowledge production stage, while interdisciplinarity at the knowledge dissemination stage has shown limited change. Moreover, the level of interdisciplinarity is relatively low in more application-oriented disciplines. Further analysis reveals that interdisciplinarity in the production stage has a positive relationship with faculty members’ publication of high-level journal articles, while interdisciplinarity in the dissemination stage facilitates the formation of highly cited articles. In addition, laboratories with an applied and multidisciplinary orientation are more conducive to unleashing the positive effects of interdisciplinarity on research innovation. Based on the findings above, this study suggests strengthening the construction of substantive interdisciplinary platforms, improving interdisciplinary evaluation mechanisms, promoting collaborative innovation between universities and industry, and increasing investment in interdisciplinary research in applied fields.

The deep integration of technological and industrial innovation is often constrained by cross-sectoral institutional barriers. Taking the Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen as a case study, this research explores the process mechanism and realization model of science-industry integration driven by the joint construction of new R&D institutions by universities and local governments. The study finds that this process exhibits phased characteristics: “institutional breakthrough and connection establishment—capability building and value empowerment—rule output and ecosystem shaping”. As institutional entrepreneurs, institutions through contractual co-construction, value enhancement, and collective entrepreneurship strategies, achieve a role leap from factor aggregators and network collaborators to ecosystem architects, promoting a double-helix co-evolution model for science-industry relations. To resolve multiple logical conflicts, institutions integrate resources through dual bargaining, establish order through standardized governance, and build consensus through meaning construction, constructing Trinity legitimacy acquisition mechanism.

Cross-jurisdictional urban clusters higher education hubs, such as the Cascadia Innovation Corridor and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, play a significant role in the global knowledge economy. The construction model of these hubs depends primarily on the interaction between their functional objectives and coordination mechanisms. The Cascadia Innovation Corridor, relying on collaboration among diverse actors and various flexible mechanisms, embodies a “market-driven, ecologically symbiotic” higher education hub model under limited transnational governance. In contrast, the Greater Bay Area, relying on institutionalized co-governance among diverse actors and guidance from national strategies, exhibits a “government-led, strategically coordinated” higher education hub model, while simultaneously facing constraints arising from rule misalignment and collaborative friction caused by institutional disparities. The construction of cross-jurisdictional higher education hubs requires the facilitation of the cross-regional flow of factors such as students, talent, knowledge and innovation, the formation of coordination mechanisms that align with functional objectives, institutional contexts and industrial foundations, and the transformation of institutional differences into resources for regional innovation governance.

Engineering doctorate education plays a strategic role in driving industrial innovation and addressing complex engineering problems. Focusing on engineering doctorate collaborative training in the context of China’s Excellence Engineer education reform, this study takes the structure of leading responsibilities as its analytical focus and conducts a comparative analysis of materials from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Japan. The findings show that, across different institutional contexts, the configurations of leading responsibilities among government, universities, enterprises, and social actors at key functional nodes form four relatively stable collaborative training models: the market-driven autonomous collaboration model, the public-intermediary coordination model, the university-alliance co-governance model, and the industry-university-government institutional collaboration model. Cross-model comparison further indicates that the transition of engineering doctorate training from project-based cooperation to institutionalized collaboration depends on five supporting conditions: the clarification of primary responsibilities in collaboration, the institutionalization of collaborative relations, the complementary alignment of collaborative timelines, the public credibility of collaborative quality assurance, and the practical orientation of collaborative outcomes. Through typological analysis and mechanism identification, this study provides an institutional reference for optimizing engineering doctorate collaborative training within China’s Excellence Engineer education reform.

Special Admission Plans have expanded opportunities for students from underdeveloped areas to enter key universities, yet “fairness in access” does not automatically lead to“fairness in process and outcomes”. Drawing on the college student transition model, this study uses a transition support program at a top “Double First-Class” construction university as a quasi-experimental setting and adopts a mixed-methods design to examine its mechanisms and practical boundaries. The findings show that: first, students who participated in the program performed significantly better than non-participants in academic preparedness, sociocultural preparedness, and learning engagement, while no significant difference was found in academic performance; the program indirectly influenced grades by improving students’preparedness and learning engagement. Second, the program’s greatest value lay not in academic pre-teaching, but in sociocultural empowerment through decoding implicit university rules and reshaping support networks. Third, due to regional resource disparities, students admitted through special admission plans showed internal heterogeneity in soft skills such as English and programming, making a uniform intervention model prone to a “one-size-fits-all” dilemma. University support systems should therefore shift from homogeneous academic remediation to precisely differentiated cultural navigation and institutional decoding, using sustained support to break down hidden academic barriers.

The high-level opening-up of vocational education and the advancement of vocational education “going abroad” must be grounded in the international literacy of teachers in higher vocational colleges. Taking 2,096 full-time teachers from 31 higher vocational colleges nationwide as the research subjects, this study adopted the latent profile analysis method to explore the typological characteristics and influencing factors of teachers’ international literacy in higher vocational colleges. The results show that the global competence of these teachers can be categorized into four types, namely Foundation-weak Type, Attitude-driven Type, Balanced-development Type and Excellence-leading Type, which deepens the theoretical understanding of teachers’ international literacy in non-Western contexts. Factors including academic qualifications, gender, and organizational support exert significant impacts on the classification of teachers’ international literacy types. Higher vocational colleges should focus on the differences in teachers’ global competence types, improve the organizational support system, implement targeted promotion strategies, strengthen cultural infiltration and practical experience, and construct an ecological environment for improving teachers’ global competence that integrates practical attributes and the characteristics of vocational education.

In response to the pressing demand for elderly care professionals driven by the “silver economy”, China’s vocational education, following its scale expansion and hierarchical upgrading, is confronted with a structural dilemma of substantive disconnect. Relying solely on internal educational reforms is insufficient to break this impasse; thus, integration with external institutional frameworks is imperative. Japan’s social security system and vocational education system have forged a stable “education-economy” coupling nexus, laying the foundation for the sustained supply of high-quality elderly care professionals. The Japan’s experience reveals that: service catalogs transform ambiguous and broad social demands into specific and focused curriculum standards; payment and pricing rules facilitate the equitable sharing of practicum costs; and these external mechanisms drive internal adjustments within the vocational education system. Drawing on this experience, from the perspective of the type-based development of vocational education in China, efforts should be made to: construct a conversion chain from social demand to teaching curriculum, namely the “Long-Term Care Insurance Service Catalog—Vocational Competency Unit—Professional Curriculum Module”; explore synergistic incentive tools for industry-education integration that combine “insurance reimbursements with practicum subsidies”; and develop an integrated competency progression sequence across secondary, higher, and undergraduate vocational education underpinned by institutional demands. Ultimately, this will facilitate a systemic transition from internal educational administration to cross-sectoral collaborative governance..