Based on large-scale student survey data, this study explores the underlying mechanisms by which AI influences college students’innovative thinking within curricular environments characterized by varying levels of “challenge” and “support”. The findings reveal that learning engagement acts as a bridge in enabling AI to foster innovative thinking. Specifically, AI exerts its effects indirectly primarily by stimulating deep cognitive and emotional engagement, and its efficacy is shaped by the curricular environment. The curricular environment exhibits a dual moderating logic of “amplification” and “substitution”: a “high challenge–high support” environment strengthens the “amplification” pathway mediated by learning engagement, whereas environments deficient in either challenge or support highlight the “substitution” pathway. The educational value of AI is not an intrinsic attribute but is co-constructed by the curricular environment through the synergy of challenge and support.

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.

While generative artificial intelligence accelerates educational transformation, it simultaneously precipitates urgent legal challenges and ethical dilemmas. The research findings reveal that college students exhibit significant behavioral tendencies toward the improper use of GenAI. This trend has precipitated a systemic crisis in traditional pedagogical models centered on knowledge dissemination, with courses such as ideological and political education and humanities general education experiencing the most significant erosion of their foundational values. The structural imbalance between technological openness and ethical governance, insufficient teacher support coupled with intensified peer competition, and escalating academic pressure alongside proliferating burnout emerge as pivotal drivers of GenAI improper use. Risk perception in technology usage can effectively mitigate opportunistic tendencies under stressful conditions, while substantially enhancing the intervention efficacy of teacher support. The risks associated with the use of GenAI can be mitigated through the following approaches: establishing a new educational model of human-machine collaboration, creating ethical constraints for technology applications, strengthening teachers’ AI-ready leadership, and promoting a paradigm shift in the educational evaluation system.

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.

With the accelerated process of digital transformation in higher education, the tension between traditional university teaching evaluation models and the digitalized educational paradigm has become increasingly prominent, placing higher demands on the construction of teaching evaluation systems in universities. Against this backdrop, fully exploring the functional potential of artificial intelligence in university teaching evaluation has emerged as a crucial pathway for promoting evaluation reform. From the perspective of the “technology-education” relationship, the current application of artificial intelligence in teaching evaluation still faces numerous challenges. The root cause lies in the ineffective mutual construction between technology and education, which in turn limits the effectiveness of evaluation practices. Therefore, this study proposes a practical pathway of “technology-education” co-construction to enhance the practical efficacy of AI-based teaching evaluation in higher education. It seeks to build a process-oriented “teaching-learning-evaluation” system through the dimensions of coordination, synergy, and mutual regulation between technology and education, thereby facilitating the deep integration of artificial intelligence into university teaching evaluation and constructing a system that aligns with the demands of higher education in the new era.

Against the backdrop of the deep advancement of education digitalization strategies, revealing the intrinsic mechanisms of the deep integration of artificial intelligence and higher education is essential for building a high-quality intelligent education ecosystem. Based on STS theory and the TOE framework, this study extracts five conditional variables: technological autonomy, leadership impetus, organizational synergy, application coverage, and ecological openness, while classifying integration levels according to the SAMR model. By employing fsQCA on 53 “AI + Higher Education” typical application scenarios recognized by the Ministry of Education, this paper explores the causal mechanisms driving the digital transformation of higher education. The findings indicate that the six configurations generally follow two modes: “Organization-Driven Transformation” and “Technology-Ecology Symbiosis”. Accordingly, it is proposed to establish a top-level strategy of mutual construction between organizational change and technological empowerment, build a borderless and open intelligent landscape, and precisely match transformation pathways based on resource endowments, so as to construct a high-quality intelligent education ecosystem featuring human-machine collaboration, co-creation, and sharing.

As a key area in the new round of institutional reform, institutional reform in universities serves as the fundamental focus for accelerating the modernization of university governance systems and capabilities. To reveal the internal mechanisms of higher education institution reform, this study adopts the grounded theory approach to analyze 40 typical cases of institutional reform initiatives in universities, thereby summarizing and refining the practical logic behind these reforms. The research findings indicate that such reforms are driven by practical issues such as operational inefficiency and excessive institutional expansion. They require systematic implementation through synchronized streamlining of administrative bodies and staffing, strengthening departmental restructuring and integration, centralized management, and digital transformation process redesign. This aims to reduce organizational structures and staffing quotas, achieve systematic and holistic governance, and prioritize risk mitigation, steady progress, job transfers, and faculty governance capacity enhancement as safeguard mechanisms. Consequently, it is necessary to further establish an overall action framework for institutional reform in universities, explore scientific decision-making foundations for institutional streamlining and optimization, and implement a relatively flexible and adaptive organizational reform model through supportive organizational culture and humanistic care.

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.

The coping strategies of college students towards academic pressure shape the development pattern of their social emotional competence. Based on the survey data of 937 college students, this study explores the mechanism by which academic pressure affects social emotional competence. The research finds that academic pressure has a “double-edged sword” effect: while promoting the development of ability characteristics, it inhibits the improvement of ability tendencies; academic pressure drives college students to seek “digital intimacy”, but this path becomes an invisible barrier to the development of social emotional competence; “real companionship” strengthens the positive impact of academic pressure on ability characteristics, but has limited influence on ability tendencies; academic pressure reflects the “learner’s paradox” in higher education through the dual effects of “ability construction-value dissolution”. To enhance the social emotional competence of college students, it is necessary to reasonably regulate the sources of academic pressure for college students, guide them to use the Internet correctly to cope with academic pressure, strengthen their real interpersonal support systems, and construct a dual-track evaluation system for students under academic pressure.

Research universities are an important component of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education in the United States, and its classification method has been continuously improved and refined in various updates. Before the 2021 edition, the classification of research universities was included in the basic category; the 2025 edition renamed the Basic Classification as the 2025 Institutional Classification, while adjusting the classification of research universities to a separate category of Research Activity Designations, with corresponding optimizations and adjustments to the classification methods and standards. The new classification, while retaining the two core indicators of “number of research doctorates awarded” and “research expenditure” to distinguish three types of research universities, has dozens of additional indicators, helping to accurately present the actual development status of each research university from multiple perspectives. It is recommended to scientifically plan the development scale of China’s research universities, thoroughly evaluate the feasibility of core classification indicators such as the number of doctoral degrees awarded and research expenditures, objectively establish basic standards for independent classification, and set up several observation indicators to build a multi-dimensional research university classification system with Chinese characteristics.

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.

Promoting the reform of faculty employment systems in Chinese universities is not only an essential institutional requirement for the connotation-based development of higher education, but also an imperative in building a modern university system. This paper analyzes the academic and professional attributes of university faculty, clarifying the conceptual foundations of faculty employment systems and emphasizing the central role of tenure. Tracing the development of China’s university faculty employment system through four stages—incubation, initiation, promotion, and development—the study draws on theories of new institutionalism, academic career lifecycle, motivation, and stakeholder engagement to explain the logic behind the evolution and implementation of these systems. It also identifies a trend of value distortion in current practices, driven by excessive emphasis on instrumental rationality and performance metrics. To restore the normative values of China’s faculty employment system, the paper proposes a multifaceted strategy: upholding the threefold goals of identification, motivation, and safeguard; improving five interrelated subsystems—position structuring, recruitment, evaluation, incentives, and exit mechanisms; defining three institutional standards—contract duration, ranks, and recruitment boundaries; and clearing two governance pathways—democratization and legal safeguards.

Teaching motivation and teaching engagement are two key factors influencing teachers’ professional development and students’ learning outcomes. Based on survey data from 7 996 teachers across 134 undergraduate institutions nationwide, this study applied latent profile analysis to examine the profiles, effects, and distribution characteristics of teaching motivation and engagement among Chinese university teachers. The results identified five distinct profiles: low motivation and low engagement, relatively low motivation and low engagement, high motivation but low engagement, low motivation but high engagement, and high motivation and high engagement. Each profile was influenced by environmental factors, and their distribution varied across demographic variables. The study deepens the understanding of teaching mechanisms among Chinese university teachers.

In higher vocational colleges, teachers are the central human capital for training high-skill talent, and the level of their digital literacy is decisive in driving the digital overhaul of specialties and achieving high-quality growth. Based on Social Cognitive Theory, the article constructed a “personal-behavior-environment” triadic interactive framework of teachers’ digital literacy , analyzing the situation of teachers’ digital literacy in Zhejiang Higher Vocational Colleges through comprehensive qualitative interview, questionnaire survey, structural equation modeling (SEM), and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The study found that practice behavior is the direct channel for the generation of teachers’ digital literacy; multi-condition collaboration is the key mechanism for the development of teachers’ digital literacy; and insufficient external support is the main obstacle to improving teachers’ digital literacy. Based on these findings, it is recommended to enhance teachers’ individual digital literacy self-efficacy to strengthen digital teaching behaviors; deepen school-enterprise collaborative training in higher vocational colleges to promote the realization of multi-condition collaboration; and perfect the policy and institutional guarantees for teachers’ digital literacy to amplify the effect of external support.

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.

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.

AI is increasingly demonstrating capabilities in academic writing that rival or even surpass those of humans. Consequently, to safeguard the originality and rigor of degree theses, some universities have established specific AIGC detection rates as a criterion for identifying academic misconduct. While this policy may temporarily curb the direct use of AIGC content, it is already presenting challenges such as false positives and a widening digital divide. In the long term, it could expose the inadequacy of current regulations in the face of technological progress, leading to a fundamental misalignment of regulatory boundaries. Therefore, navigating the AI era necessitates a paradigm shift guided by STIs—moving from formalistic judgment to value-based assessment, and from technological disciplining to capability development. By constructing multi-level evaluation systems, strengthening technical support, and establishing adaptive regulatory frameworks, we can accommodate the future paradigm of human-AI collaborative creation. This approach offers a new analytical framework for understanding academic innovation in the age of AIGC.

Tracing the genesis of self-contained knowledge in China’s vocational pedagogy, its vitality, dissemination, and efficacy are fundamentally rooted in the autonomous practice of vocational education with Chinese characteristics. In the context of building a leading educational nation, the key to constructing a logical, systematic, and endogenous self-contained knowledge system for vocational pedagogy in China—and to leveraging its role in serving and supporting independent practices in vocational education—lies in strengthening the development of vocational pedagogy as a discipline in the new era. Self-contained knowledge serves as the logical core of this system. Accordingly, three epistemological frameworks have been established: one focusing on autonomous practice and knowledge in Chinese vocational education, another on the forms, content, and purposes of self-contained knowledge in vocational pedagogy, and a third on independent vocational education philosophies, theories, and knowledge points. Using these as the basis for knowledge production, a disciplinary framework for vocational pedagogy centered on the “production-dissemination-application” of self-contained knowledge has been developed. This paper further proposes systematic pathways through which the discipline of vocational education can empower the construction of an self-contained knowledge system for vocational pedagogy in China.

Higher vocational education holds a significant position in China’s educational system, and the high-quality technical and skilled talents it cultivates contribute to economic and social development. Based on data from the Chinese College Graduate Employment Survey (CCGES) and the Statistical Data of Education Funding from 2009 to 2019, this study finds that public education financial investment can significantly enhance the starting salary of vocational college graduates. This conclusion remains valid even after addressing endogeneity by constructing an instrumental variable based on the per-student funding system in vocational colleges established in 2014. The mechanism behind this impact lies in the fact that public education financial investment enriches institutional resources, improves the education quality, and facilitates better major-job congruence for graduates. The increase in public education financial investment particularly benefits graduates from low-economic-capital families and has a more pronounced effect in schools located in financially constrained regions of western and central China. The findings of this study highlight the effectiveness and equity of public education financial investment, as well as its positive implications for promoting high-quality employment.

AI-generated theses are deemed the applicant’s independently completed work under copyright law but regarded as ghostwriting research misconduct in higher education, creating a coherence interpretation dilemma. Labeling prompt?based AI thesis writing as ghostwriting fails to satisfy its constituent elements and systematic interpretation under academic norms. The divergence in originality standard between copyright law and academic norms forms the logical basis for identifying research misconduct in AI-generated theses. A dual-layer framework of “content-behavior” should be adopted: at the content level, existing academic research misconduct categories should apply to risks of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism, with human authors bearing strict liability; at the behavior level, new misconduct categories should be established based on mandatory AI usage disclosure obligations.

The university teaching and learning system and pedagogical practices are continuously challenged by the iterative development of artificial intelligence. The advancement of AI imposes new demands on various dimensions of higher education, including its philosophy, institutional frameworks, and methodologies. “Decentralization” can be interpreted as a process of distributing power, information, or resources, characterized by high autonomy, inclusiveness of innovation, efficient connectivity, and equity. It aims to enhance the overall efficiency of the system, increase transparency, and strengthen risk resilience by reducing dependence on central authority. Decentralization offers a novel conceptual model for addressing the challenges posed by AI technologies in university talent cultivation. It can strengthen students’ individualized development, promote their value realization and innovative capacities, and safeguard educational equity. Furthermore, it should be emphasized that the decentralized model ought to augment rather than replace traditional teaching approaches, while paying close attention to potential risks such as knowledge fragmentation, quality degradation, blurred authority, and value nihilism.

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.

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.

Against the macro backdrop of building an educational powerhouse and advancing Chinese modernization, the interaction between universities and regions has been endowed with new significance in the current era. Based on national strategic needs and the current state of higher education development, this article systematically analyzes the issues of regional “imbalanced and inadequate development” in China’s higher education. It elucidates the functional positioning of universities as the pivotal hubs for “cultivating talent, driving innovation, and leading cultural development”. The article proposes that universities need to deepen their symbiotic relationship with regions through three major pathways: “structural reform, transformational change in models, and systemic reform”. This involves further optimizing educational evaluation and internal governance to stimulate endogenous motivation. Looking ahead, more universities should progress from?“grounding locally while aspiring globally”?to?“trailblazing uncharted territories”,?serving national strategies through deep integration into regional development and contributing the wisdom and strength of Chinese higher education to the world.

The unclear talent training positioning of vocational education system hinders its connotation development. Based on Arthur’s Theory of the Nature of Technology, a theoretical framework is built to analyze the technical realization process of occupational goals, clarifying the stratified correspondence among vocational technology, activities, personnel and education. Specifically, secondary vocational education trains operators of individual technology; higher vocational college education trains its improvement personnel; vocational undergraduate education trains the users of domains; master’s vocational education trains its planners; doctoral vocational education trains its improvement personnel. Thus, it’s necessary to consolidate the status of secondary vocational education, clarify the boundary of higher vocational college education, establish the knowledge system of vocational undergraduate education, and explore the practical path of vocational graduate education.

Based on panel data from 2012-2022, this study investigates the impact of higher education development on the agglomeration of scientific and technological(S&T) talents. The results indicate that higher education development drives S&T talent agglomeration, with “innovation ecosystem optimization-talent attraction enhancement” serving as a key transmission mechanism. This driving effect exhibits a threshold characteristic of increasing marginal benefits both intrinsically and through government support, and it spreads to geographically adjacent regions via spatial spillover effects. The driving effect is significant in eastern China, insignificant in central China, and exhibits a “failure paradox” in western China.. Accordingly, a gradient optimization strategy for “input-process-output” should be implemented to fully unleash the marginal benefits of higher education; the allocation system of regional innovation factors should be improved with higher education as the hub to promote the transition of S&T talent agglomeration from “scale-driven” to “ecosystem-absorptive”; and spatial linkage awareness should be strengthened, adopting a “flying geese pattern” to guide regionally differentiated development.

The development of vocational education at the undergraduate level is a significant institutional reform in China’s vocational education system. The attractiveness of vocational undergraduate universities is not only a key factor in achieving the reform objectives but also an important indicator for evaluating its effectiveness. Based on organizational ecology theory, this study applies the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to examine 50 vocational undergraduate universities, and identifies 4 configuration paths that enhance institutional attractiveness: the school self-enhancement type under low competition, the policy-driven type based on strong organizational capacity, the location-enabled type led by advantageous programs, and the synergistic type of organizational capacity and resource endowment. Institutional type is a necessary condition for attractiveness, while program offerings and organizational capacity are key contributing factors. A compensatory relationship is observed among location advantages, policy support, and competition from other universities. Enhancing the attractiveness of vocational undergraduate universities requires optimizing their spatial distribution and strengthening the development of pilot schools.

Research on the global trends of higher education development helps to profoundly grasp the logic of transformation and future directions of higher education. An analytical framework is constructed from the three dimensions of dynamics, priorities, and stakeholders in higher education to analyze the development trends in major countries. This study identifies several key tendencies of higher education: a trend of talent aggregation driven by both market and international dimensions; a trend of technological competition under the dual impetus of strategy and excellence; a trend of collaborative innovation through the integration of education and industry chains; and a trend of negotiated advancement based on both internal and external logics. At present, China’s higher education development has completed the phase of “quantitative” accumulation and entered a new stage. It should focus on enhancing the capabilities of innovation development, high-quality development, and balanced development, and give full play to its leading role in building a strong education country.

Interdisciplinary integration has emerged as a critical imperative for technological innovation and talent cultivation. Grounded in the dual logic of knowledge boundaries and control inherent in disciplines, this study employs Basil Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing to deconstruct the dynamics of integration. The analysis reveals that interdisciplinary practice entails a structural shift from “strong” to “weak” classification—signifying increased permeability across disciplinary borders—and a transition from “strong” to “weak” framing, reflecting a diversification of control over knowledge production. Based on these dimensions, four ideal types are proposed: institutionalized multidisciplinary coordination, spontaneous multidisciplinary cooperation, institutionalized fusion innovation, and emergent frontier exploration. It reveals the evolutionary logic of Interdisciplinary integration, moving from a simple combination to a deep collaborative creation. The study concludes that advancing interdisciplinary integration requires not the dissolution of existing disciplines, but the navigation of the embedded agency paradox, thereby sustaining a productive tension between institutional stability and epistemological innovation.

Referencing an evaluation framework for a powerful education system comprising 15 indicators across four dimensions.The findings indicate that China leads in 3 indicators, is approaching America level in 3 indicators, and shows potential for further improvement to narrow the gap in 6 indicators. Based on dimensionless calculation, China’s comprehensive Education Power Index has reached 79.8% of that of America. This demonstrates the historic achievements and transformative progress in China’s educational development since the reform and opening-up, particularly since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. It is recommended to deepen comprehensive educational reform, coordinate reforms in the systems of science and technology, and talent development, integrate higher, continuing, and vocational education, and fully leverage the leading role of higher education, thereby achieving new breakthroughs in accelerating the construction of a powerful education system.

In the intelligent era, cultivating critical AI literacy is of great significance for college students to promote innovative behaviors. Based on survey data from 1?062 college students, this study empirically analyzes how critical AI literacy influences college students’ innovative behaviors from the perspective of knowledge management theory. The results show that critical AI literacy exerts a significant positive impact on college students’ innovative behaviors, and this conclusion remains valid after a series of robustness tests including the instrumental variable method. In terms of the mechanism of action, critical AI literacy improves the level of innovative behaviors through the chain path of reconstructing the quantity of reflective knowledge and then reconstructing the structure of reflective knowledge; it also affects innovative behaviors through the independent mediating role of reflective knowledge structure reconstruction. Moreover, knowledge sharing can further strengthen the positive effect of critical AI literacy on reflective knowledge structure reconstruction. On this basis, this study puts forward implications such as cultivating college students’ critical AI literacy, encouraging them to reflect on and reconstruct their own knowledge with the help of AI, and building intelligent knowledge sharing platforms.

China prioritizes high-quality and full employment for graduates by deepening the industry-education integration. Using data from the 2024 annual quality reports of 1 003 higher vocational colleges, this study finds that such integration significantly improves graduates’ employment quality, with effect sizes following the order: job quality > wages > employment opportunities. Specifically, it demonstrates a clear “cumulative advantage effect” effect on overall employment quality and job quality, a distinct “compensatory effect” effect on employment opportunities, and a mixed effect on wages. Colleges that are in the central region, public, and out of the “Double High-Level Plan” benefit more in overall employment quality and job quality. Colleges that are in the western region, private, out of the science, engineering, agriculture, and medical fields, and out of the “Double High-Level Plan” benefit more in employment opportunities. Colleges that are in the eastern region, private, out of the science, engineering, agriculture, and medical fields, and in the “Double High-Level Plan” benefit more in wages. To effectively leverage the positive impact of industry-education integration, it is necessary to build a multi-collaborative promotion mechanism, establish a tiered and progressive practical model, and implement context-specific support policies.

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.

Educational evaluation is pivotal to building a strong nation in education, and classification framework holds strategic significance for comprehensive reform. China’s graduate education classification evaluation has undertaken valuable explorations but still faces challenges such as blurred classification ontologies and mismatched functions. This study constructs an “Adaptive-Ecological Classification”(AEC) Framework for Evaluation, grounded in systems thinking and the foundational logic of “ontology-driven, goal-oriented, and institutionally coordinated” classification evaluation. It proposes a practical pathway comprising macro-level ecological planning, meso-level value-oriented guidance, and micro-level standard system construction, providing theoretical underpinnings and practical guidance for building an autonomous classification evaluation ecosystem.

Entering the 21st century, to address global challenges, build regional innovation ecosystems, and resolve crises in university development, the fourth-generation university has emerged as a new paradigm. The fourth-generation university is distinguished by multi-actor collaborative innovation for regional and societal value creation, challenge-based learning that cultivates creative and socially responsible change-makers, cross-disciplinary research that integrates knowledge to address complex societal challenges, and open, tightly coupled partnerships that support a mutually beneficial innovation ecosystem. The fourth-generation university signals the future direction of global higher education and denotes a shift from academic excellence to the co-creation of societal value. By integrating education and research, deepening localized studies, and mapping collaborative geographies, these initiatives provide actionable guidance for universities to integrate into regional innovation.

The classified development and evaluation of higher education institutions represent the top-level design for high-quality development in China’s higher education sector, as well as a major initiative in the reform of the governance system and mechanisms. The classification-based evaluation of higher education institutions exerts a strong guiding influence on their classified development, necessitating a logical congruence between the two. This article begins by interpreting the concepts of classified development and classification-based evaluation of higher education institutions and introducing their policy background. It then analyzes the logical congruence between classified development and classification-based evaluation, supplemented by a case study of practical experiences in the United States. By elaborating on the value logic and open logic of the reform in classification-based evaluation, and through discussions on the effectiveness evaluation of “Double First-Class” construction universities and the evaluation of general higher education institutions, this article proposes key development directions for the reform of classification-based evaluation that are conducive to the classified development of higher education institutions in the new era. These directions include value guidance, framework construction, theoretical innovation, and the refinement of evaluation indicators.

As the core combination point of technology as the primary productive force, talent as the primary resource, and innovation as the primary driving force, universities are deeply embedded in the overall national strategy and serve as a key hub supporting the construction of an educational powerhouse. The “15th Five-Year Plan” is a crucial period for building a strong education country. The development strategy of universities should anchor the goals of building a strong country and national rejuvenation, deeply rooted in the century-old gene of “saving the country, rejuvenating the country, and building a strong country”. Through the symbiotic evolution of historical position and the mission of the times, the dynamic balance of law cognition and strategic adaptation, the integration and innovation of digital intelligence empowerment and the essence of education, the development paradigm should be systematically reconstructed. The development of universities requires interdisciplinary integration to solve the “bottleneck” technical problems and build an independent knowledge system; Guided by cultural values, deepen mutual learning among civilizations and enhance international discourse power; Guided by social demand, improve the precision service mechanism and enhance service efficiency. The university will achieve a strategic leap from “adapting to the environment” to “leading transformation” by serving the self-reliance and self-improvement of science and technology, fostering new quality productive forces, and building an innovative country, thereby providing core strategic support for Chinese-style modernization.

Cultivating top-notch innovative talent in foundational disciplines is a strategic task in building a strong education nation, and academic aspiration is vital to top-notch students’ development. Using Q methodology, this study examines the aspiration types and their formation among 23 top-notch students. We identify three types: an interest-first, intrinsically driven type; a reality-oriented, goal-integrative type; and a hesitant, passively sustained type. They conrrespond to the veritists, pragmatists, and strugglers. Differences in program-application logic, academic and research experiences, and attitudes toward external evaluation and competition jointly shape these patterns. Accordingly, tailored support is needed to help students sustain growth that serves both long-term personal development and national strategic needs.