“Trees without fruit” or “big trees but sparse fruit” is a description of the apparent prosperity of China’s higher education research despite the scarcity in the core; this issue is mainly due to the long-term research relying on Western paradigm orientation. Localization is an effective way out of this trap. Localization is not only a transcendence of the single Western paradigm, but also a research paradigm with Chinese characteristics generated from the accommodation between the East and the West and their “mutual transformation”. To realize the localization transformation of higher education research, the key is to do two things well: In terms of top-level design, we should adhere to the diversification of evaluation standards, enrichment of evaluation carriers, long-term of evaluation cycle and localization of evaluation elements in China; In practical exploration, higher education research needs to establish a diverse, open, and confident research team that directly deals with real-life problems.