Through unremitting efforts, China has eliminated absolute poverty according to the established standards in 2020, but the control of relative poverty still has a long way to go. Due to the strict restrictions of China’s urban-rural dual system and household registration system, China’s rural areas have lagged behind cities in terms of income level and public services for a long time, and there are multiple types of segmentation of industry and system of ownership in the labor market of cities. Therefore, higher education has become an important explicit channel for the children of relatively poor families in rural areas to realize intergenerational flow through overcoming the urban-rural dual system and the segmentation of labor market in cities. However, how to play the role of higher education in the control of relative poverty has become an issue that needs further in-depth study. From the perspective of relative poverty, this paper considers the reality of multiple types of segmentation of China’s labor market, constructs an intermediary effect model, and discusses the effect of higher education on children of relatively poor families in rural areas as well as its mechanisms. It is found that higher education has an important role in reducing rural relative poverty and its intergenerational transmission, and the key mechanism for higher education to play its role is to promote rural individuals to break through the segmentation of urban and rural labor markets and achieve the upgrading in the major labor markets in cities. Through the decomposition of effect, it is found that the intermediary effect of career change accounts for more than 40% of the total effect in reducing the probability of relative poverty and blocking the intergenerational transmission of relative poverty. However, the intermediary effect of occupation drops to 29% for the effect of promoting income level of children from relatively poor families in rural areas to the middle or higher levels, and the role of higher education is dominant. Taking the college entrance examination scores as the proxy variable of ability, and using the standards for relative poverty of the World Bank and the EU to carry out the robustness test, we find that the main conclusions are robust. Compared with the previous literature, the contributions of this paper are mainly in the following three aspects. Firstly, it discusses the role of higher education from the perspective of relative poverty, so as to make up for the shortcoming of the existing literature mainly from the perspective of absolute income. Secondly, based on the particularity of multiple types of segmentation of China’s labor market, we can describe the role and mechanism of higher education influencing relative poverty more accurately. Thirdly, the role of education is quantified and decomposed into two parts: direct effect and intermediary effect. To some extent, it reveals the interactive relationship among China’s higher education, occupational mobility and relative poverty, and provides a useful reference for China’s control of relative poverty in the future. The policy implication of this paper is that China should pay attention to the important role of higher education in the control of relative poverty after 2020, that is, it is necessary to enhance the opportunities and quality of higher education for rural citizens, remove barriers of occupational mobility between and within rural and urban areas, and establish long-term mechanisms for reducing relative poverty in the benign interaction of higher education, occupational mobility and income.

Education is the cornerstone and core of economic, social, and scientific development. In the face of increasingly fierce international competition, countries around the world have launched various key construction strategies to enhance the comprehensive strength and competitiveness of national education. Effectiveness evaluation, as a special measure to test the effectiveness of national and regional key construction, is an inevitable need for higher education development to a high level, when compared with licensing evaluation, educational accreditation, and ranking from the perspective of the need to reform the supply of evaluation models and methods at the stage of education development. However, there are few theoretical and practical studies on the topic of effectiveness evaluation of university disciplines in domestic and foreign literature, and no systematic theoretical system and model has been formed yet, not to mention the scientific implementation system. This paper systematically studies the content and classification of the evaluation of the effectiveness of university disciplines. This paper considers that effectiveness evaluation is the examination of the achievements, results, and effects of the development of university disciplines within a certain period of time based on the predefined conditions, scope, and goals. According to the evaluation needs, three types of effectiveness evaluation are defined for the first time: absolute, relative, and value-added effectiveness, which provides the theoretical basis and foundation for the effectiveness evaluation classification function. On this basis, a new method of three-dimensional system is proposed, and it includes construction task elements, elements of task completion and development effect, and evaluation method elements. Based on this, a two-dimensional matrix structure framework is established, and feasibility analysis is conducted on the composition of the construction task dimension and four dimensions. After that, the application expression of matrix system decomposition is given, and the advantages of this method are demonstrated. In order to apply the effectiveness evaluation more effectively, guidelines are given for its application in university disciplines, and four application strategies are proposed, namely, the formulation of evaluation objectives, the analysis of evaluation objects, the construction of evaluation system, and the principles and paths of evaluation method selection. Finally, the authors analyze the factors influencing the credibility of the results and the areas where the results can be applied, thus forming a set of theoretical frameworks and implementation strategies for effectiveness evaluation. This paper expands and innovates in the following aspects. Firstly, it systematically defines the content and functions of educational effectiveness and effectiveness evaluation and provides the basis for the research in this field. Secondly, it proposes for the first time a new model of constructing a three-dimensional thinking system for effectiveness evaluation, which makes the content of the system more comprehensive, effective, and usable through the logical relationship of the development goal, development achievement, and evaluation mechanism of the evaluation objects. Thirdly, based on the theory of the three-dimensional system construction, an original model of a two-dimensional structure effectiveness evaluation system is established. It has the special function of testing the achievement characteristics of educational tasks and goals and development degrees. Fourthly, four paths of effectiveness evaluation implementation are proposed to ensure its special function performing and indicate the application scenarios and strategies, which provide theoretical and application references for university discipline effectiveness evaluation in the new era. To a certain extent, this paper reveals the inner logic of university discipline evaluation, provides a new paradigm for the continued research in this field, helps the organizers and undertakers of education key construction projects to carry out effectiveness evaluation practically, has certain theoretical and practical significance in promoting education evaluation reform and theoretical innovation, and helps to improve the modernization of higher education governance system and governance capacity.

In recent years, with the increased importance of national innovation ability, graduate education has become the main focus of many countries to cultivate innovative talents and enhance innovation capacity, and initiatives such as expanding the scale of graduate education and increasing investment in graduate education are common. However, studies focusing on the role of graduate education on innovation are rare, and existing studies usually only analyze the role of overall education or higher education, and the examination of the impact of graduate education remains at the level of case studies, lacking more rigorous empirical tests. Based on the Global Innovation Index, World Bank Open Data, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, and other data sources, this paper constructs two sets of panel data for 35 countries from 2013–2017 and 60 countries from 2008–2017 and uses the national innovation ability analysis framework proposed by Furman. On this basis, this paper constructs an econometric model with the global innovation index as the dependent variable and the relative size of different levels of higher education as the independent variable while controlling for elements such as public innovation infrastructure and the development of industrial clusters so as to identify the role played by each level of higher education in the improvement of national innovation ability. It is found that the relative size of undergraduate and college education does not have a significant positive effect on the national innovation ability evaluated by the national innovation index. The significant positive effect of master’s education on national innovation ability exists mainly in innovation-leading countries and innovation-emerging countries. The significant positive effect of doctoral education on national innovation ability has a delayed effect and requires a certain time period to manifest. This paper attempts to explain the above empirical findings. Compared with undergraduate education, postgraduate education has a significant positive effect on national innovation ability, which is mainly determined by cultivation objectives. The R&D-oriented learning style makes the human capital output of postgraduate education more advantageous in terms of innovation. However, the focus of master’s education differs from that of doctoral education. The diversified objectives and shorter training cycle create conditions for the role of master’s education on national innovation capacity to be manifested more quickly to a certain extent. The difference in the impact of postgraduate education on countries with different innovation abilities may be influenced by the quality of their postgraduate education, and may also be determined by the different industries needed in different countries’ development stages. Compared with the previous literature, this paper expands on the following aspects. First, it empirically analyzes the impact of postgraduate education on national innovation ability and compares it with that of undergraduate education. Second, it explores the possible differences in the innovation impact of postgraduate education at different levels, which can provide a reference for the formulation of postgraduate education policies. Third, it compares the role of postgraduate education and its internal levels in different countries with different innovation capabilities, which can provide suggestions for an in-depth analysis of the innovation role mechanism of postgraduate education.

Since the restoration of graduate enrollment system in China in 1978, especially in the last two decades, the scale of China’s graduate education has maintained a rapid expansion trend. In a short period of time, it has developed into the country with powerful graduate education in the world. It is also in the process of the scale expansion that the orientation, structure and development path of contemporary graduate education that is in line with China’s national conditions are shaped. However, there is little literature to discuss the driving factors and implementation strategy of the scale expansion of graduate education in China, and there is also a lack of in-depth research on the impact on the scale expansion of graduate education. This paper uses the official published educational statistics of the Ministry of Education, the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, the five-year plan for the development of national education and the public data released by a third-party organization (http://www.zgkyw.com/). By comparing and analyzing the relationship between the scale of graduate education and internal and external factors, it is found that the rapid expansion of graduate education in China is jointly driven by emergency adjustment and academic drift under soft constraints. Although the overall national development plan, economic and social development and individual academic education demand have a macro impact on the expansion of graduate education, they are often not direct and obvious, and there lacks regular mechanism or channel, that is, it is often driven by the “urgent” policy adopted by the government to deal with major social events and the goal of local colleges and universities in pursuit of higher academic reputation. This mechanism has formed an unbalanced development strategy in promoting the scale expansion of graduate education, which is embodied in the expansion of “weak academic” degree with master’s degree and professional degree as the main part, the local expansion of applied soft disciplines, the dependent expansion of traditional discipline structure and the expansion of latecomer driven by local universities. This has led to problems such as the disenchantment of teacher-student relations, conflicts in training goals, increased pressure on education quality assurance within the graduate education system and weak external adaptability. In the future, graduate education should speed up supply-side reforms and improve the responsiveness of graduates to serve the socio-economic needs; establish classification development ideas, and dynamically adjust the degree and graduate education structure; establish a diversified quality view, and deepen the reform of graduate training models; and take into account fair development, and increase support for latecomer department. This paper clarifies the mechanism of promoting the scale expansion of graduate education in China, and puts forward a scale expansion explanation model which is different from that commonly used in domestic and foreign academic circles. It enriches the theoretical explanation of the expansion of graduate education in late-developing countries. This paper finds that the scale expansion of graduate education in China is characterized by imbalance, and from this perspective, it makes a brand-new analysis of the concept, orientation, quality and social adaptability of graduate education. The findings are helpful to change the development concept of graduate education, adjust the development path of graduate education, and strengthen the supply-side reform of graduate education.

China’s higher education has entered the era of popularization. In 2020, the gross enrollment rate of higher education reached 51.6%, with 40.02 million college students. China has become the country with the largest scale of higher education in the world. When China has not fully understood the theory and practice of higher education massification, it was quickly replaced by “popularization,” which not only surprised the world, but also overwhelmed ourselves. At the “turning point” of history, to re-understand the connotation and essence of Western higher education massification theory and to explore the development path of a big higher education country towards a strong higher education country is not only the theoretical self-examination that a big higher education country should have, but also the requirement of realizing a strong higher education country. From the perspective of theory and comparison, this paper analyzes in detail the background of higher education massification theory in the West, reveals the connotation and essence of Western higher education massification theory, and points out the particularity of China’s higher education at the massification stage. This paper holds that, compared with Western countries, China’s higher education enters the stage of massification or popularization late and fast. The standard of higher education massification in the West only has the significance of “statistics” but does not have the value of guiding practice. The core of Western higher education massification theory is not the expansion of quantity, but the improvement of quality. The change of quantity is only the external representation of the change of system and structure. Only using the theory of massification to interpret the scale expansion of higher education obscures the connotation and essence of the theory, and reduces the application value of the theory. As the Western higher education popularization theory is an “early warning” theory about the development of higher education, a theory about “Dao” of the development of higher education, not about the “application.” Understanding a series of changes brought about by scale expansion is a rational consciousness of the whole higher education system. Therefore, China’s higher education development should get rid of the thinking mode of “focusing on indexes.” This paper points out that the scale expansion of higher education in China has its own particularity from “massification” to “popularization.” First of all, the background of the Western scale expansion theory is completely different from that of China, so the path of realization is also different. Secondly, the task that China’s higher education faces when it enters the massification stage is more complicated. It is necessary to maintain the scale growth, ensure the quality and solve a series of problems such as employment. The reason is that the massification in the West mainly solves the problem of opportunities for school-age youth to receive higher education, while the higher education popularization in China also needs to solve the employment problem of college students. Therefore, the popularization of higher education in China not only depends on the sustained economic development, but also needs a higher education system and structure to support the popularization of higher education. China’s higher education at the popularization stage needs diversified school-running modes, diversified investment systems, and different types and hierarchical structures. This paper holds that the high quality at the popularization stage refers to the high quality of personnel training, and the popularization of high quality needs to reshape the concept of “elite education,” enhance the “bottom-line awareness” and cultivate the “bottom-line thinking” for higher education quality.

With the global proliferation of neoliberalism, performance-oriented higher education regulation policies have, to some extent, led to an excessive preference for quantitative indicators in academic evaluation. In the ranking competition, universities around the world place great emphasis on thesis results. Results are important, but if quantity becomes paramount, it will be against the law of knowledge production and prone to academic misconduct. To fight against the “publication fever,” the German Research Foundation and the German Science Council, at the federal level, have led a series of opinion papers, issued the transformation initiative of academic evaluation, namely, the quality rather than quantity, and provided the refined operational advice. At the same time, universities also have corresponding practices in faculty evaluation, jointly promoting the sound operation of the academic ecosystem. Based on this, the core question of this study is how to eliminate the “thesis only” orientation regarding evaluation methods and content in Germany, how to deal with the relationship between peer review and quantitative indicators, and what these initiatives can reveal for the establishment of a scientific academic evaluation mechanism. The main sources analyzed in this study are the documents on academic evaluation issued by the German Research Foundation and the German Science Council, as well as the regulations on academic evaluation in the recruitment protocols of academic staff at eight German universities. The study has found that the primary measures to transform the academic evaluation mechanism in Germany are to comprehensively improve the academic evaluation methods, give full play to the fundamental role of peer review, and improve the specific procedures. In addition, a proprietary cognitive and application system is established for quantitative indicators, so as to clarify the supportive role of such indicators for peer review. Secondly, they expand the content of academic evaluation and propose a multi-dimensional approach to academic evaluation. Specifically, this approach emphasizes that high-quality academic work is based on disciplinary criteria and takes into account the characteristics and traditions of each discipline; and it tries to expand the concept of academic achievement, emphasizing the importance of research services in addition to knowledge production. Furthermore, this multi-dimensional approach pays attention to the individual career development of scholars, reflecting respect for individual needs. The transformation of academic evaluation is also practiced in German universities, mainly in two aspects. Firstly, they should optimize the specific operation methods of quantitative and qualitative evaluation, such as adopting the calculation method of starting with the doctoral thesis and considering the time interval, so as to realize the relativity of bibliometric indicators statistics. When applicants fill in the number and title of papers, they must state the content of the papers, and the doctoral thesis will be taken as the reference to evaluate the expansion and innovation of their scientific research work. German universities should improve the recusal conditions for evaluation, and in addition to the teacher-apprentice relationship, working relationship or kinship relationship, they also need to pay attention to the school relationship, academic cooperation, and so on. Secondly, they should focus on the comprehensive evaluation of academic ability, the quality of publications related to the specialty and with substantial personal contributions, the quantity if necessary, the importance of scientific cooperation and leadership, and the transfer of knowledge and technology. To a certain extent, this study reveals the inner logic of establishing a scientific evaluation system, namely, we should, based on the complex and multiple characteristics of the academic system, adjust the academic evaluation approach comprehensively for different evaluation objects instead of mechanically adopting the same set of evaluation dimensions. For example, we should fully consider the publication culture, practices, and strategies of different disciplines and pay attention to the average in each field. There are also difficulties regarding the above measures. How to allocate the weights of different evaluation dimensions and how to improve the long-term mechanism of comprehensive evaluation are also the problems facing Germany to improve the academic evaluation mechanism nowadays, which need to be further studied.

Universities play a leading, dominant, basic, and monopolistic role in the high-tech knowledge production and productivity transformation and the cultivation of knowledge innovation talents and high-tech R&D talents. This determines that universities have become an indispensable productivity factor with dynamic value for national economic take-off, social progress, and its stability and sustainable development. In the process of national modernization and governance ability modernization, the biggest challenge we are facing is the modernization of universities, which serve as the undertaker of higher education, and their governance abilities for their decisive role in high-tech knowledge and innovation. Based on the theory of organizational governance and the theory of university leadership, this paper clarifies that the governance system is about the organizational structure that is mainly related to the basic institutional category and the organizational power structure, as well as the institutional structure that is mainly related to the procedure specification of organizational operation at the institutional level. Governance ability is about the effective performance of factors within the governance system in the process of governance, and especially, it reflects whether the governors can give full play to the effectiveness of those factors. Based on these concepts, this paper discusses the governance system, involving two interrelated governance factors, namely, governance structure and governance process. It is found that the effect of governance structure is, to large extent, subject to the governance ability that can determine the efficiency of the governance process and varies among different subjects. Therefore, governance ability highly connects governance process and governance subjects, and is decisive for governance efficiency. University leadership is the influence exercised by university leaders on the university organization and its members according to the attributes of the university organization and the utilization of personal traits, legitimate authority, and university resources, so as to achieve university goals. University governance is about the effective performance of the factors of university governance structure in the process of university governance, especially the leadership reflection regarding whether the university leader can give full play to the effectiveness of those factors. Therefore, it can be inferred from the analysis that the university leadership is a highly relevant and decisive governance factor in the process of university governance, the university leader is the decisive governance subject in the process of university governance, and the leadership of university leaders is the most important factor in the governance ability structure of the university organization. With the clarification of the concept of university leadership and its relationship with university governance ability, the logic that university leadership is a practical way to promote the modernization of university governance ability is also established. This paper constructs and interprets the factor model of university leadership from seven aspects, namely, ideological influence, organizational influence, decision-making influence, institutional influence, resource influence, cultural influence, and presidential influence, and discusses their specific effects in the modernization of university governance. In the modernization of university governance, universities and university leaders must follow the basic attributes and unique laws of universities as academic ecological organizations and complex systems, and make a conscious effort to develop and enhance the university leadership. The future international competitiveness of Chinese universities depends on the modernization of the university governance system and governance ability and the enhancement of university leadership.

Teachers’ flow is an important issue in the study of university governance modernization, which is influenced by the internal and external ecosystem of higher education. Under the strong promotion of the “double first-class” initiative, the academic labor market is booming as never before, and the alternative competitive policies of promotion or leave, promotion or transfer, and promotion or demotion significantly exacerbate the teachers’ flow. The battle between universities and cities for talents is becoming increasingly intense, resulting in various problems such as vicious competition and utilitarian job-hopping. The scientific governance of teachers’ flow has become a new challenge for policy-making and academic research. From the academic research, the current discussion on the governance of teachers’ flow mainly presents two different tendencies: one believes that the government should formulate and introduce specific regulatory measures to restrict teachers’ flow, so as to avoid the vicious competition caused by frantic poaching; and the other believes that the government should fully respect and give full play to the fundamental role of the market, so as to break the rigidity of human resource allocation brought about by the tenure system. Based on the contradictory relationship between regulation and freedom, this paper systematically explains the two different tendencies and major theoretical views of the governance of teachers’ flow in university, as well as the contradictory value conflicts in the process of practice. Moreover, based on the analysis of the current governance situation of teachers’ flow in China and the relationship between regulation and freedom in the governance process, it is argued that guaranteeing freedom by regulation is the value practice demand and natural value choice to promote the governance of teachers’ flow in university. Therefore, this paper proposes that we should optimize the governance of teachers’ flow in university in four aspects. Firstly, we should improve the rule system of human-oriented teachers’ flow, incorporating the development rights and interests of flowing teachers into the construction of modernization of teacher governance system and governance capacity, which can manifest the humanistic care of the government in the process of teacher management function. Secondly, we should improve the contract management system regarding the appointment system of college teachers based on equality and voluntariness, so as to avoid the difficulties of teachers’ flow and the lack of academic freedom caused by a rigid management system and to promote the two-way independent choice for the flow. Thirdly, we should strengthen the process monitoring of teachers’ flow and timely improve the disorderly behavior of flow that damages the development of teachers and universities based on the monitoring results, so as to promote the healthy and orderly development of teachers’ flow based on the stimulation of ecological vitality. Compared with the existing studies, this paper argues that there is a unity of opposites between regulation and freedom, namely, regulation may restrict freedom and freedom may lead to disorder. In the governance of teachers’ flow in university, the value conflict between regulation and freedom is mainly manifested in the process of how to promote the optimal allocation of human resources, guarantee teachers’ right to independent development, and fulfill the government’s teacher management function. It is necessary to clarify the value relationship between regulation and freedom in teachers’ flow, maintain fairness and stability, and improve the cultivation of the human resources market environment. In addition, we should highlight the service orientation, helping to realize the change of the government’s teacher management function, and protect the development rights and interests, promoting the optimization of teachers’ independent choice mechanism.

From the perspective of international higher education practice, the integration of production-education has attracted great attention from various countries, but it still stays at the conceptual and operational level, and the pathway to realize the integration still needs to be studied and refined. This is also a difficult problem that all parties in society have to face. In previous studies, scholars often discuss the impact of the integration of production and education on practical ability from the key aspects of education but lack the research that systematically discusses the path of integration of production and education to enhance practical ability at the overall level and ignore the role played by individual students in the process of education. To address the above problems, the authors conducted a questionnaire survey on 11,828 graduate students of professional degrees from 14 provincial areas and more than 200 colleges and universities across China. This paper selects 7627 full-time non-oriented professional degree graduate students as the research sample, systematically discusses different dimensions of the integration in professional degree education, explores different paths of the integration on the cultivation of practical ability of professional degree graduate students, and the difference of influence. All of these aim to elaborate the rationality and feasibility of the integration of production and education as the distinctive feature of cultivating professional degree graduate students and the core value of the cultivation quality of professional degree graduate students represented by practical ability. Based on the implications of university-enterprise (industry) collaborative education, this paper proposes that the integration of production and education in professional degree graduate education should include four dimensions: teaching capital, human resources, student socialization, and audit and certification. Through analyzing 7627 research data, it is found that the direct and indirect influences of the four dimensions of production-education integration on students’ practical ability exist simultaneously. Among them, students’ socialization has the strongest direct influence on practical ability, and students’ participation in competitions and base internships is still the most effective way to improve practical ability. The practical interest of professional degree students plays a mediating role between the integration of production-education and practical ability, and the integration of teaching capital has the highest influence on practical interest, indicating that education and teaching have the most obvious role in motivating students to seek tacit knowledge. Besides, there are also significant differences in the influence paths of the integration of production and education on practical ability among regions, universities, and degree types. Therefore, it is necessary to realize the sharing and emergency management of high-quality resources in the form of cross-regional education-production alliance, gradually alleviate the differences between regions, universities, and degree types in the cultivation of production-education integration talents, and improve the overall cultivation quality of professional degree graduate students. Moreover, it is required to advocate the practice-oriented academic system for teachers to build a multi-source tutor team that understands the teaching rules of colleges and universities and is also familiar with the practical operation of enterprises. It is also needed to break the policy barriers, implement the system of practice base alliance, deepen the connection between production and education, and build a community of practice and education for professional degree graduate students. Lastly, it is imperative to strengthen the role of students as the main body and their “catalyst” role. This paper constructs a theoretical framework for the integration of production and education in professional degree graduate education, clarifies the core position of the practical ability of professional degree graduate students in the cultivation process, and to a certain extent provides support for deepening the reform of professional degree graduate education.

The independent enrollment reform is an important initiative of Chinese enrollment system reform, and had been effective for 16 years from 2003 to 2019. In the year 2020, the independent enrollment policy is replaced by the plan for strengthening basic academic disciplines. In terms of the current situation of domestic and international studies, there is no research that systematically analyzes the change from the independent enrollment policy to the plan for strengthening basic academic disciplines based on the theoretical framework. This study analyzes the transmutation of the independent enrollment policy at the beginning of implementing the plan for strengthening basic academic disciplines, and explores the policy change path and logic of the process from the emergence of the independent enrollment policy to the replacement by the plan for strengthening basic academic disciplines, aiming to provide policy reference for the cultivation of top-notch talents in China. This study adopts the advocacy coalition framework, which considers the policy subsystem as the unit for analyzing policy change and the conceptual system as the causal driver of policy behavior and policy change. The subsystem operates in an external environment, which consists of relatively stable parameters and external events, and influences the subsystem through the long-term coalition opportunity structure and the short-term constraints and resources of subsystem actors. The research results are as follows. First, a shift in the deep core idea has contributed to the change of the independent enrollment policy to the plan for strengthening basic academic disciplines. Specifically, before introducing the plan for strengthening basic academic disciplines, the coalition of supporters and the coalition of doubters shared a common value perception in terms of the deep core idea, namely, they supported deepening the reform of the college enrollment system and expanding the autonomy of college enrollment. However, during the policy change period, the deep core idea of the advocacy coalition gradually changed towards promoting the integration of individual-based and state-based values. Second, the difference between the core idea and the surface idea of the policy has contributed to the internal adjustment of the independent enrollment policy. Third, four paths, namely, internal events of the subsystem, policy orientation learning, consensus path, and external events of the subsystem, become the mechanisms that promote the change of the independent enrollment policy to the plan for strengthening basic academic disciplines. Based on the research findings, this paper proposes that the implementation of the plan for strengthening basic academic disciplines policy should attach importance to guiding the public opinion, improving the social supervision mechanism, and clarifying the dialectical relationship between equality and scientificity. Meanwhile, attention should be paid to balancing the relationship between national orientation and individual aspiration, as well as building an orderly quality assurance system for the selection and training of top-notch talents. At the theoretical and practical levels, this paper has made the following explorations. Firstly, based on the latest international research results of the advocacy coalition framework, the theoretical structure of the policy change path and framework is clarified. Secondly, it systematically analyzes the history, logic and mechanism of the change of independent enrollment policy, and focuses on the effect of events and consensus paths within the subsystem on policy change, which is generally neglected in domestic studies. Thirdly, the implications of the change process of independent enrollment policy to the implementation of the plan for strengthening basic academic disciplines are prospectively revealed. Finally, while providing a Chinese case study for the advocacy coalition framework in an international context, this paper discusses the interpretability of the Western theoretical framework for policy change in China, thus providing an opportunity to expand the explanatory boundaries of the advocacy coalition framework theory and construct a local policy discourse analysis.