Classification-based development of higher education institutions is an important indicator of the maturation of a higher education system. In the process of the formation and evolution of the classification system for university in China, three structural features have become deeply intertwined: a vertical hierarchy based on institutional levels, a horizontal classification rooted in industrial sectors and academic disciplines, and a resource allocation pattern centered on key construction projects. Their interplay has caused institutional classification to gradually devolve into hierarchical ranking in practice. This predicament is jointly shaped by cultural, fiscal, and governance factors: a monolithic standard of success has eroded institutional type identity; a fiscal logic that privileges selectivity over baseline support has undermined equity across types; and homogenized evaluation systems have rendered classification rules persistently ineffective. To make classification operational, fiscal restructuring should serve as the entry point, establishing category-specific funding guarantees and a differentiated appropriation system while advancing type-based performance evaluation and recalibrating governance instruments, so that institutional reform creates a practical foundation for cultural transition and gradually builds a higher education classification system that accommodates diversity and ensures baseline equity.

With the widespread use of Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) tools in academic writing, the impact on postgraduate students in China warrants attention. An analysis of survey data from 14 817 postgraduates reveals that doctoral students have a stronger demand for using AIGC tools to assist in academic writing compared to master’s students. Postgraduates from “Double First-Class” construction universities, those studying in engineering, higher academic years, and those with extrinsic motivations for pursuing studies or perceiving a strong utilitarian publication atmosphere among peers are more likely to use AIGC tools for writing assistance. Postgraduates primarily utilize AIGC tools to assist in searching for materials related to their research topics and translating/refining the language expression in their papers. Postgraduates who use AIGC tools for coursework, translation, or refinement are more likely to recognize the positive impact of these tools on their research efficiency, but their use in research design may hinder the development of academic writing skills. Based on these findings, it is recommended that universities improve academic evaluation standards, and strengthen the development of academic ethical norms and usage skill training for AIGC tools.

With the expansion of the scale of doctoral education and the implementation of the flexible educational system, the number of married or parental doctoral students in China is increasing. It is worth paying attention to whether marriage and childbearing will hinder the academic training of doctoral students. Based on the survey data of doctoral students in a first-class university, the differences in academic experience and achievements of doctoral students with different marriage and childbearing statuses are analyzed. The results showed that doctoral students with children reported higher scores in supervisor guidance, program involvement, and course learning compared to other doctoral students, especially unmarried doctoral students, as well as higher growth in research capability and overall satisfaction. One possible explanation is that doctoral students with children have increased efficiency in teacher-student communication, program involvement, and course learning, which enhances their research capability and overall satisfaction. In addition, there is no significant gender difference in the relationship between the marriage and childbearing status and the academic experience and achievement of doctoral students. The research results fail to support the view that marriage and childbearing will inevitably hinder academic training for doctoral students. Future research can explore the relationship between the marriage and childbearing status and academic training performance by considering other indicators.

Through statistical analysis of national higher education research papers in 2020, the distribution of scientific research journal publication in higher education in China is unbalanced. “Double First-Class”construction universities occupy a predominant position in scientific research in higher education field, while public higher vocational colleges contribute less and the trend of that is declining. Administrative organizations, research institutions and other institutions also contribute in this filed. Independent author and co-authors less than 2 still dominated the pattern of publishing papers. The authors with higher academic titles publish more papers than others. Nearly 70% papers are funded by various organizations. Papers funded by provincial government and national government have still taken the advantage exceeding 55%. The statistic analysis indicated a strong focus on national strategies. Variety of topics reflecting policies and social issues shows the positive response and accountability of higher education researchers and institutions.

With the continuous development of artificial intelligence technology, AIGC technology has been more and more widely used, and it has a wide range of prospects and potentials in the field of higher education, but it also brings opportunities and challenges for the innovation of higher educational concepts and changes in approaches. In this regard, the study firstly describes ChatGPT, an example of “text generation” in multiple modalities of AIGC. Then, new ideas for digital transformation of higher education are discussed, including three aspects: high-consciousness learning, skills-based education, and smart education: high-consciousness learning stimulates the subconsciousness of learners, and thus turns to unconscious learning, which can open up a high-dimensional world; skills-based the educational concept of highlighting the priority of skills in education can help to cultivate talents that meet the needs of the future society; smart education integrates skills, morality, knowledge, intelligence and other elements at a high level of consciousness, and can expand the wisdom of education and teaching. Finally, a framework for the comprehensive governance of digital society and culture is proposed, aiming to build a digital moral education system for the mutual benefit of man and machine.

Whether online learning technology keeps pace with the times to meet the diverse needs of students is very important for college students to continue to participate in online learning. Based on the survey data of 100801 college students from 258 universities in China, the paper uses the integrated technical acceptance model (TAM) and task-technology fit (TTF) as the analysis framework to systematically investigate the effect and mechanism of task-technology fit on college students’ intention to continue using online teaching. The results showed that the task technology fit is in the upper middle level, but still needed to be further improved; Task-technology fit has the greatest effect on the willingness to use online teaching, which is a key variable that can not be ignored; Through the mediating role of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and use attitude, task-technology fit has a significant positive impact on college students’ willingness to continue using online teaching. The study suggests that in order to promote the continuous participation of college students in online learning, we should further improve the technical support, fully understand the needs of college students, optimize the platform construction, strengthen technical training, and improve the quality of online teaching.

The statistical analysis of higher education research papers published for two decades has the important reference value for producing original knowledge system in Chinese education, and supporting high-quality education development with high-quality education scientific research, and improving the awareness of research activates, and cultivating new academic talents. According to the statistics of the 23 most influential journals in education, public undergraduate universities and colleges contributing far more than other types of institutions. The contribution of “Double First-Class” universities is relatively large, while the participation of other types is low. Regionally, there is a large gap between the central and western regions, northeast regions and eastern regions. Higher education research field has maintained openness due to the diversification of participating institutions and the mainstreaming of co-authorship. Based on the results of keywords analysis, the editorial office selected the top 10 academic hotspots of higher education research in 2023, and invited scholars make relevant comments on the process, opinions and tendencies of the annual research.

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.

Informatization teaching is an important dimension reflecting the development quality of higher vocational colleges in the digital era, and also an important starting point to promote digital transformation. This study used a questionnaire survey method to investigate 6 973 teachers from 226 vocational colleges in 28 provinces across the country. And the purpose of this paper is to explore the achievements, problems and reasons of informatization teaching in higher vocational colleges under the background of digital transformation. Research has found that the “innovation power” of the current informationization teaching scene in vocational colleges, the “support power” of informationization infrastructure, the “guarantee power” of informationization teaching environment, and the “development power” of informationization teaching practice have significantly improved. However, there are issues such as “integration cold” behind “technology hot”, “lagging behind” in the use of digital educational resources, and obvious “shortcomings” in teachers’ information-based teaching abilities. Therefore, higher vocational colleges need to promote the shift of information technology equipment from “built” to “used”, focus on the co-construction and sharing of digital education resources, practice the concept of “new infrastructure”, and enhance teachers’ information technology teaching ability, so that to realize the digital transformation of vocational education with high-quality development of information-based teaching.

The academic value-added evaluation of teachers is considered to be more in line with the laws of academic research and the requirements of knowledge production innovation, and can reduce the “academic bubble” caused by unscientific tendencies such as “paper-centric” and delocalization to a certain extent, so it is respected in the reform of higher education evaluation practice in the new era. However, due to the cognitive bias of the concept of academic value-added evaluation, the disciplinary barriers have not yet been broken, and the value of educating people is difficult to highlight, the reform of teachers’ academic value-added evaluation has fallen into many difficulties. In the future, the reform should be made from the aspects of value concept, knowledge system, and mechanism setting, which is the natural way to change the academic ecology and promote teachers to produce sustained academic innovation momentum.

Under the trend of birthrate decline, using queue factor population prediction method and constructing ARIMA time series model, three fertility plans of low, medium, and high are set to predict the supply and demand scale and gap situation of higher education students in China from 2024 to 2050. Research has found that the supply of higher education students exceeded demand between 2024 and 2037, forming a demand gap that sharply decreased from 5.1466 million to 169.8 thousand people; Between 2038 and 2050, there will be a trend of oversupply, resulting in a supply gap that has expanded from 2.7402 million to 11.7185 million, 9.9678 million, and 8.2169 million, respectively. This indicates a historic turning point in the number of students around 2038, which may trigger a crisis in the quantity and quality of students, and create an imbalance in the higher education ecosystem. In this regard, multiple measures should be taken simultaneously to vigorously boost the social fertility level, continuously enhance the supply capacity of students, establish a monitoring and crisis warning mechanism for students, promote the adaptation of enrollment scale and ecological carrying capacity, and achieve a higher level of dynamic balance between the supply and demand of higher education students.

Academic undergraduate education has been developed into a set of undergraduate education system with the main goal of cultivating research-oriented talents, which has the characteristics of non-functionality, interdisciplinary integration and sustainable development. It pays more attention to basic theory teaching, scientific research method training and innovative ability cultivation. Practical undergraduate is one of the basic modes of talent training in modern higher education, with the main goal of training applied talents. Practical undergraduate has the characteristics of focusing on practice-based purpose, technology orientation and specialty education, which pays more attention to technical education and training, cultivation of ability to solve practical problems, and cultivation of engineering technology awareness and professional ethics. Vocational undergraduate is a sub category of the practical undergraduate, which is an education to cultivate vocational high-level technical talents. Its characteristics mainly include: vocational orientation, complexity of technical skills training, and connection between teaching and production. Vocational undergraduate education pays more attention to cultivation of vocational advanced ability, on-site practical teaching and cultivation of vocational quality.

Information literacy is a significant ability in digital society. Information literacy of university students is directly related to the future talent development of the country. In view of the lack of accurate and normative research on China’s university students’ information literacy due to the complex situation, firstly this study analyzes and summarizes the concept, connotation and evaluation standards of information literacy based on the research at home and abroad. This paper then explores the new requirements of university students’information literacy and the general basis and method of constructing the evaluation standards. On this basis, taking Shanghai as an example, this paper constructs the theoretical framework of university students’ information literacy evaluation standard with regional characteristics. The research results hope to provide reference for the research and practice of university students’ information literacy.

The reform of university-run enterprises in China is an important proposition to build the innovation system and improve the innovation ability of universities. From the perspective of system design, university-run enterprises have experienced four stages: policy encouragement, system encouragement, system supervision, administrative separation and cleaning up. At the same time of achieving the reform results in each stage, university-run enterprises are still facing poor integration of governance and management system, and enterprise behavior is difficult to regulate and how to design the new era monitoring system. The reform of university-run enterprises in the future will focus on the following aspects: (1)return to the main business, integration mechanism, give full play to the power of university-run enterprises, and promote the overall development of science and technology industry in Colleges and universities; (2)value endowing, clear rules, standardized the behavior of university-run enterprises, and stimulating the synergy of university innovation system; (3)performance oriented, iterative information, to build a new era of university-run enterprises with Chinese characteristics supervision system.

Revitalizing higher education in western China is the strategic mission for the high-quality development of higher education in western China in the new era. Optimizing the discipline layout of universities in western China in the new era is a national strategy to serve the major strategic needs of the country, empower the economic transformation and development of western China, and leverage the geographical advantages of traditional disciplines. However, the current development of disciplines in universities in western China is faced with such practical difficulties as weak coupling with regional economic development, insufficient radiation and guidance of disciplines, and the lack of outstanding advantages and characteristics of disciplines. The internal driving force and development vitality of disciplinary construction in universities in western China require strong institutional supply, focusing on activating the internal driving force of disciplinary teams, promoting the cluster development of universities and disciplines, building disciplinary innovation platforms to deepen the integration mechanism of industry and education, and relying on regional advantages to guide the distinctive development of disciplines.

As an important part of the personnel reform at higher education institutions in China, the implementation process of the “up-or-out” system has been accompanied by disputes and even doubts. The uncertainty of the nature of the “up-or-out” contract leads to significant differences in judgments. In the dimension of the relationship with teachers, higher education institutions are not authorized by laws and regulations. They and teachers are civil subjects with equal legal status, and the “up-or-out” contract does not have the public nature. Therefore, the “up-or-out” contract disputes can not be solved by administrative litigation, but by civil litigation. Based on the legal nature of labor disputes, we should abide by the system of “one mediation, one arbitration and two trials” in the procedural arrangement.

Vocational education is a unique type of education, and the research on teaching theory with “type characteristics” of vocational education is of great significance. The vocational didactics，a discipline of “how to teach persons for industrial occupations”, is the basic subject of vocational education teacher training suggested by UNESCO. This paper discusses the basic concepts and characteristics of the vocational didactics, and examines the relevance of the basic principles of general didactics to vocational education. Vocational education should create more opportunities for learners to learn independently, while maintaining the basic characteristics of learning as a collective activity of community of practice; it should realize the integration of workplace learning and school learning, and ensure that learners become the main subject of the teaching-learning process through comprehensive interdisciplinary learning tasks in different learning places. The development of modern society not only shapes a new learning paradigm of vocational education, but also endows vocational learning with rich social significance. How to take into account the development of personality and social needs in high-quality vocational education, is an important task of vocational didactics research.

Establishing the compulsory courses of labor education is a necessary move to clarify and guarantee the important position of labor education, implement the main mission of labor education in the new era, and realize the promotion of labor literacy education in universities, middle schools, and primary schools. The survey shows that various colleges and universities have various requirements for the compulsory courses of labor education, and it is urgent to clarify the direction and strengthen the guidance of norms. The standardized construction of compulsory labor education courses should adhere to the bottom line, scientifically locate the nature and objectives of the courses, rationally plan the course structure and content, establish and improve teaching management mechanism, and gradually improve the course assessment and evaluation system. At the same time, it is necessary to dialectically handle the relationships of normative and flexible, theoretical and practical, short-term and long-term, so as to promote the maturity of the curriculum and the real implementation of labor education.

Macro theories on higher education have strong local, political and developmental characteristics, and have a unique position and role in the construction of an independent knowledge system of higher education theories. Since the reform and opening, the development of macro theories of higher education in China has gone through the process of creation, reconstruction and development, and has achieved historic accomplishments and accumulated important experience, but it also has obvious deficiencies. With the goal of constructing an independent knowledge system and furtherly promoting the innovation of macro theories on higher education, we should correctly handle three major relationships, furtherly deepen the study of the Party's century-old education history and the Sinicization of Marxism theory on education, strengthen the coordinated endeavor in solving major theoretical and practical issues, and optimize the system and mechanism of macro theory research.

The transparency obligation is a fundamental obligation of trustworthy artificial intelligence, a constituent element of technological due process, and a key responsibility mechanism for achieving the goal of visual justice. As a transition from artificial narrow intelligence to artificial general intelligence, ChatGPT has the ability to generate structured content. While improving academic capabilities, it can also mask academic dishonesty, posing an unprecedented threat to academic integrity. In order to ensure academic integrity in the era of artificial intelligence, it is necessary to establish transparency obligation, apply academic integrity norms and trustworthy AI guidelines, and jointly regulate ChatGPT’s intervention in academic paper creation activities to ensure academic integrity, academic fairness, and academic responsibility. The academic community’s views on whether ChatGPT can be used in the creation of academic papers, such as open use, fair use, and prohibited use, as well as the subject, object, and dual creative subject theories on the copyright of ChatGPT generated content, have a direct impact on the fulfillment standards, fulfillment methods, and forms of responsibility for transparency obligation. The density standards for fulfilling transparency obligation include the “fishbowl transparency” mode and the “reasoned transparency” mode. Regardless of which concept, doctrine, and model is chosen to fulfill transparency obligation, its content depends on the purpose and use of the academic paper, its system depends on academic norms, and its procedure is for visual justice.

Policy, as an environmental element of top talent education, plays a supporting role in the cultivation of top talents. Taking the 144 policy documents from 1977 to 2022 as the object, the historical evolution of policy changes in China’s top-notch talent education can be divided into four stages: the exploration and initial stage, the gradual expansion stage, the rethinking stage, and the rational innovation stage. On this basis, the policy content quantitative analysis method is adopted to explore the evolution of China’s top-notch talent education policy and its direction from the levels of basic facts and values. Based on the results, it is recommended that efforts should be made to raise the policy attention to the education of top-notch talents, construct a pattern of top-notch talents with multi-agent collaborative participation, strengthen the research on the localized experience of China’s top-notch talents education, condense the programs and modes with Chinese characteristics, and clarify the orientation of top-notch talents education policy to strengthen the synergy of the policy.

This study constructed a structural equation model of interdisciplinary training environment, interdisciplinary engagements, and interdisciplinary abilities of doctoral students based on the survey data of 4 373 doctoral students from 37 “Double First-class” construction universities. The results showed that doctoral students were less satisfied with interdisciplinary resources and courses and more satisfied with the interdisciplinary training provided by supervisors. Doctoral students’interdisciplinary engagements were insufficient, and their interdisciplinary abilities and reflective behavior levels had a large room for improvement. Interdisciplinary engagement completely mediated the relationship between interdisciplinary resources and interdisciplinary ability; it also partly mediated the relationship between interdisciplinary courses and interdisciplinary ability as well as the relationship between interdisciplinary training provided by supervisors and interdisciplinary ability. Moreover, interdisciplinary background positively moderated the effect of interdisciplinary courses and interdisciplinary engagement on interdisciplinary ability, and negatively moderated the influence of interdisciplinary resources and interdisciplinary training provided by supervisors on interdisciplinary ability. Therefore, the training institutions should strive to create a good interdisciplinary training environment, enhance the enthusiasm of doctoral students in interdisciplinary engagement, and improve the interdisciplinary training system according to the interdisciplinary background of doctoral students.

The fundamental issue of education is the relationship between individual development and social development. Education develops in a system and aligns with the country’s progress. The Communist Party of China (CPC) and our country, China, advocate the unification of all-round development in individuals and society, emphasizing the comprehensiveness of education as the value orientation of education in China. In contrast, the educational ideals prevalent in the Western context, particularly illustrated by the United States, exhibit a unilateral approach that diverges from the principles upheld by the CPC and China. In today’s times, we need to consider the missions of universities from the standpoint of educational comprehensiveness and establish a more comprehensive education system. We must strengthen our confidence in education, adhere to the value orientation of comprehensiveness, reject simple “individualism” and “socialism”, and advocate “the unity of all-round development of human beings and the overall progress of society”. Furthermore, it is imperative to conduct an in-depth analysis of the logical framework of education, resist the stagnation at the level of “atomization of the individual” and “general education for cultivating citizens”, and call for the integration of “a person’s holistic attributes (i.e., moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, and labor-related) and a person’s multifaceted role (i.e., encompassing both utilitarian and transcendence aspects)”.

In order to promote high-quality vocational education, it is of great value to clarify the research and practice of China’s vocational undergraduate talent training model. This study takes 21 vocational and technical colleges as examples to analyse the text of their “Annual Report on the Quality of Higher Vocational Education” over the past four years. It finds that the goal of talent training is to actively serve regional development, but it lacks high-end industrial suitability, and emphasizes the professional combination of talents but ignores the high-level connotation; the professional offerings is constantly improving its adaptability, the undergraduate nature needs to be demonstrated; the curriculum construction is oriented to professional ability, and the theory and practice haven’t been integrated yet; the “Three Education” reform focuses on the connotative development, and the teaching staff urgently needs to be strengthened; the construction of a modern apprenticeship system focuses on school-enterprise cooperation education, but it lacks standard guidance, the “1+X” certificate system is steadily developing, and its gold content needs to be improved; the main body of multi-level evaluation in school has clear rights and responsibilities, but it lacks the evaluation status of enterprises and industries, and the evaluation orientation has been reversed, but it lacks professional characteristics. Accordingly, the cultivation of talents for vocational undergraduate education should clarify the positioning of “field engineers” and highlight the characteristics of the type; adhere to the “technology-oriented” cultivation process to create cultivation advantages; deepen the “school-enterprise cooperation” cultivation system to strengthen the guarantee of cultivation; and build the “knowledge+ability” evaluation system to enhance the effectiveness of cultivation.

The present study surveyed 94 361 students from 266 universities and applied the cognitive appraisal theory to analyze the impact of academic stressor on strain, as well as the separate and joint moderating effects of academic self-efficacy and stress coping strategy on this stressor-strain relationship. Results showed that academic stressor positively predicts strain; academic self-efficacy buffers the relationship between academic stressor and strain; positive stress coping strategy buffers the stressor-strain relationship, but negative stress coping strategy intensifies this relationship; and academic self-efficacy and negative stress coping strategy have joint moderating effects on this relationship. The findings reveal complex mechanism of strain and provide practical guidance for reducing students’ academic stress and promoting their mental health.

The “application-assessment” system has become the general method of the admission of doctoral students in China. It is necessary to figure out the core competence in the doctoral entrance examination to select high-quality doctoral students. This study analyzes the 2021 “application-assessment” enrollment policy text of 42 first-class universities of the world, using an analysis software, Nvivo 11, based on the grounded theory to construct the core competence framework of academic doctoral students. In conclusion, the core competency framework of academic doctoral students includes 3 dimensions, 5 core literacy and 29 basic requirements. Specifically, professional and general knowledge is the foundation, political attitude, academic interest and ambition are the directions, and scientific research ability and innovation potential are the core. The enlightenment for future academic doctoral student enrollment lies in: First, quantitative indexes are not the only and absolute criterion to evaluate research ability, while more attention should be paid on soft power assessment of academic interest, character and potential; Second, cooperative research is an important internal motivation to academic innovation, thus the evaluation of cooperation ability of doctoral students should be emphasized; Third, the evaluation of interdisciplinary ability of doctoral students should be strengthened as the training of interdisciplinary talents is a trend.

The dilemma of the VUCA era not only brings a sense of embodiment to higher education for passive response, but also requires higher education to actively make strategies for change. At present, there are security risks in both traditional and non-traditional fields, the trend of anti globalization is rising, global economic development and recovery are weak, the fourth industrial revolution is sweeping the world, digital transformation is also promoting the reform of governance system, and so on. Such a dilemma of the times requires higher education to make a positive response, and it is also reshaping the form of higher education. Facing the future, the action choice of China’s higher education institutions should be to realize high-quality development, coordinated development, digital transformation and modernization of governance ability of higher education through innovative connotation construction, structural optimization, digital element renewal and multiple collaborative governance, and to look for breakthrough strategies and development opportunities in external changes.

The Ministry of Education’s “Further Strengthening the Work of Rule of Law in Colleges and Universities” describes the blueprint of the work of rule of law in colleges and universities from five key organizational systems and ten key content levels. The construction of administrative rule of law in colleges and universities in the new era is the core of the work of rule of law in colleges and universities. The logical basis is to implement the autonomy of running a school as the starting point, to achieve good governance and fairness and justice, and to complete the five missions of colleges and universities in socialist countries. The risk structure is mainly reflected in the legal disputes caused by the unclear laws and school rules, which can be summarized into four categories: the adequacy of the subject’s authority, the legitimacy of the purpose of the behavior, the satisfaction of procedural justice and the remedy without loopholes. We should improve the ability of colleges and universities to prevent and resolve legal risks, improve the system and mechanism, promote the modernization of the governance level of colleges and universities by means of the rule of law, and strive to achieve the goal of the 14th Five-Year Plan（2021-2025） to strengthen education.

“Four Substitutions” is the main appearance and problem of academic evaluation in Chinese universities, which seriously affects the ecology and ethos of academic research in China, hinders the progress of science and technology in China and the cultivation of talents in universities. ?This paper discusses the problems of simplification and fragmentation in academic evaluation of colleges and universities in China, which are embodied in “citation substitution”, “publication substitution”, “quantity substitution” and “scientific research substitution”. The dispute between quantification and qualification of academic evaluation in Chinese and foreign universities is discussed, summarizing the international proposition of focusing on quality and complementing quantification. In the end the ideas and methods are proposed to break the “Four Substitutions”.

Higher education reform and development during the COVID-19 focus on effectively integrating online and offline teaching modes, so as to improve the quality and outcomes of the blended teaching. Based on the perspective of the community of inquiry theory, a structural equation model was constructed using the survey data of 1 116 undergraduates from a “Double First-Class” construction university, in order to explore how to improve the students’ learning effectiveness of blended teaching during the COVID-19. The results showed that students’ teaching presence, cognitive presence, and social presence can not only directly and significantly predict learning engagement, but also indirectly predict students’ learning engagement through the independent mediating effect and the chain mediating effect of students’course satisfaction and learning attitude. At the same time, the total indirect effect was far greater than the direct effect. Among the three specific indirect effects, the independent indirect effect of course satisfaction was the largest. The results offered practical implications, such as providing institutional and technical support to improve the blended teaching environment, building a learning inquiry community to promote blended learning of high quality, improving learning experience, course satisfaction and learning attitude to focus on blended learning feedback, and paying attention to diversify and personalize learning needs to improve the quality of blended teaching.

Postgraduate textbooks are the fundamental basis for teachers to teach and students to learn in the process of postgraduate course teaching, and their quality determines the quality of postgraduate teaching, which in turn affects the quality of postgraduate training. Senior teachers in colleges and universities are the main body of textbook compilation and selection for postgraduates in the United States. Textbook publishers, college teaching and learning centers and project plans assist first-time college teachers in the compilation and selection of textbooks. In the process of compiling and selecting postgraduate textbooks, four factors, including teacher appointment, curriculum development, teaching evaluation and institutional regulations, ensure the academic quality of American postgraduate textbooks. Based on this, combined with the current practice of postgraduate textbook construction in China, a system for the compilation, management and use of postgraduate textbooks for colleges and universities that reflect the characteristics of higher education in China should be established and improved; Colleges and universities coordinate the construction of postgraduate textbooks and ensure that postgraduate textbooks are politically and academically related; improve teachers’ teaching quality and give full play to teachers’ autonomy in selecting postgraduate textbooks; implement the work of incorporating teachers’ participation in postgraduate textbook construction into the teacher assessment and evaluation system; pay attention to the guiding role of institutional norms and strictly control the quality of postgraduate textbooks.

Based on panel data of 30 provinces and autonomous regions in China from 2003 to 2018, this paper examines the impact of human capital of graduate and innovation-driven on economic growth. The empirical results show that both human capital of graduate and innovation-driven have a significant positive effect on economic growth, but the interaction of the two has a negative effect on economic growth. Further analysis shows that there is a significant positive correlation between the economic growth within the regions and the spatial correlation coefficient is about 21.23%. After taking spatial correlation into account, the human capital of graduate and innovation-driven still have significant effect on economic growth in local regions, but the promotion effect is declined to some extent. It is suggested that on the basis of expanding the scale of graduate student enrollment and increasing the investment in innovation, the problem of human capital of graduate and innovation-driven coordination mechanism should be emphatically solved.

In the context of “Double First-Class” construction, the building of high-level post-doctoral quality assurance system has become an important issue for improving the governance of higher education. At present, there are some problems in China’s post-doctoral quality assurance, such as governance system with segmentation of “strong trap and weak block”, imperfect quality assurance system, deviation from the cultivation orientation as well as inefficient use of resources. All these in a large part are attributable to the leading of institutional discipline, the carrier of project support, and the means by institutionalized technical governance. To solve the dilemma of post-doctoral quality assurance, it is urgent to break the management model of the segmentation of “strong trap and weak block”, and build a comprehensive quality assurance system for post-doctoral fellows with flexible governance order, high efficient assurance process, and multiple governance culture based on the idea of “integration of the segmentation” and collaborative governance.

In the post-epidemic period, “overseas education” tends to be rational, and the general public’s demand for receiving international education in China is growing rapidly. It is a rare opportunity to promote the connotative development of the internationalization of China’s higher education. From the point of view of current situation and challenges of the internationalization of higher education under the background of the post-epidemic era, this article is based on the establishment of a “dual circulation” development pattern in which domestic economic cycle plays a leading role while international economic cycle remains its extension and supplement, combined with the application of “Internationalization at Home” theory. It proposes four major countermeasures in terms of service system, team system, education model, and integration of humanistic education and internationalization. And it promotes the quality and efficiency of the internationalization of higher education so as to strongly enhance the ability of China participating in international competition while continuing to construct a nation of powerful higher education.

In order to cultivate high value-added talents in vocational fields, the South Korean government attaches great importance to the construction of professional degree graduate education, so as to meet the needs of the labor market and provide sufficient human capital for the development of the country. By systematically arranging the history of the establishment and adjustment of professional degree graduate education categories, projects and scales in South Korea, and starting from the two key elements of driving mechanism and framework features. This study analyzes and concludes that the driving mechanism lies in the process of mutual game, adjustment and cooperation between the government, the market, and universities. The characteristics of the establishment and adjustment of the framework are legally standardized, relatively autonomous, and dynamic and flexible. This provides a useful reference for promoting the standardized, independent, dynamic and characteristic development of professional degree graduate education in China.

In the context of PhD diversified employment, secondary school teaching is a new path that PhD seeks for itself to be able to play what has been learned. Through the qualitative research of doctoral teachers, this study found that teaching experience, ability assessment, interest preferences and educational ideals formed the self-perception of secondary school teaching, welfare benefits, job stability, development space and social promotion, shaping the future generations to form the career benefits of secondary school teaching, urban attraction, famous school attraction, career retreat and other influences, scientific research experience shaped the employment environment of secondary school teaching. Among them, self-awareness and occupational benefits directly affect the willingness to teach in doctoral secondary schools, and the employment individual environment indirectly affects the willingness of doctoral secondary schools to teach through self-cognition and employment external environment through occupational benefits. This study believes that we should attach importance to the career guidance of doctoral students and lead the rational cross-border of doctors; face up to the relationship between doctors and secondary school teachers, and match the needs of the school to obtain talents; pay attention to the cultivation of talents, use talents to retain talents, and enhance the sense of professional achievement of doctoral teachers.

Higher education institutions are important for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a core element of talent cultivation, curriculum is an important action strategy for universities to promote the achievement of the SDGs. This study aims to focus on the current situation of implementing the SDGs in undergraduate general studies programmes from a curriculum perspective. Based on the connotation analysis framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the core keywords, the study identifies and classifies the sustainable development courses in universities, and analyses and summarises the content profiles of the undergraduate general studies courses in 20 “Double First-Class” construction universities, so as to understand the implementation of the SDGs in “Double First-Class” construction universities. The study also aims to understand the current situation of the implementation of the SDGs in the general studies courses of the “Double First-Class” construction universities, so as to provide reference for the better implementation of the SDGs in Chinese universities. Finally, this study suggests that universities in China should further integrate the concept of sustainable development into their general studies programmes and take the initiative to change their curriculum structure to meet future challenges, so as to contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.

This study uses survey data from 2148 academic doctoral students in 39 “Double First-Class” universities to analyze the impact mechanism of knowledge sharing on the development of doctoral students’ research and innovation capabilities. Research has found that doctoral students have a high level of knowledge sharing, their learning engagement needs to be improved, their sense of scientific research efficiency is significantly insufficient, their developmental research innovation ability has slightly improved, and their task-based research innovation ability has slightly decreased. Knowledge sharing among doctoral students has a significant positive impact on learning engagement, research efficacy, and research innovation ability. Doctoral students’learning engagement has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between knowledge sharing and research innovation ability, while research efficacy has a complete mediating effect on the relationship between knowledge sharing and research innovation ability. Learning engagement and research efficacy have a chain mediating effect on the relationship between knowledge sharing and research innovation ability. In order to promote the development of doctoral students’ research and innovation capabilities, universities should attach importance to the value and role of doctoral knowledge sharing, and unblock knowledge dissemination channels; Create a good training environment and strengthen the investment of doctoral students in learning; Enhance doctoral students’ sense of scientific research efficiency.

As an inevitable trend, AI-enabled education is shaping the new paradigm of education reform and development. AI-enabled education should adhere to the original intention of education, explore feasible realization paths, and follow the correct value orientation and law of thinking. AI-enabled education will form a ternary intelligent education model of teacher-machine-student interaction, which needs to solve four types of educational problems: person-to-person, person-to-machine, machine-to-person, and machine-to-machine. During the practice of AI-enabled education, it is necessary to grasp the development trend of AI, deepening the application of AI to comprehensively empower education in scientific research, teaching, learning, management and evaluation, the future of AI-enabled education should be implemented in the enrollment of academic and employment digitization project, the construction of subject big data project, the professional knowledge mapping project, the construction of digital textbook project, the decision-making intelligent assistance project, and the digitalization of the international education public service project of the six major projects.

In response to its domestic higher education quality crisis at the beginning of the 21st century, Australia made national efforts to reconstruct its higher education teaching evaluation system. Through top-level design, Australia deconstructed the segmental standards of education quality and the characteristics of students’ growth stages, broke the institutional barriers of evaluation, integrated repetitive surveys, and adopted a developmental view of evaluation, and finally built an annual evaluation system that covers students’ growth path from enrollment, studying, graduation to early career development. In order to guarantee the system’s quality, Australia ensured the representativeness, variety, authority and professionalism of the participating subjects in the process of reconstruction. Australia also established a centralized democratic system to ensure the reconstruction process fully integrate the opinions and suggestions of different subjects, and find the maximum convention in the reform contradictions, which also ensures efficiency in decision making to promote the smooth implementation of the reform. The Australian experience has positive implications for establishing regular teaching quality evaluation system with in China.