As the national education digitalization strategy action starts its third year, education digitalization is entering a new stage of development. Higher education is the leading force. Looking to the past, adhering to the “3C” concept of prioritizing Connection, Content, and Cooperation, higher education digitalization has achieved remarkable results such as iterative upgrades of infrastructure systems, open sharing of high-quality educational resources, and deepening domestic and international cooperation, laying a solid foundation for the comprehensive transformation of higher education digitalization. Based on the current situation, focusing on the “3I” road of Integration, Intelligence, and Internationalization, Wuhan University of Technology actively carries out pioneering practical explorations and strives to be a “test field” for higher education digitalization. It has achieved higher quality in aggregating data resources, higher efficiency in applying intelligent technology, and higher levels of international cooperation, providing support and guidance for the innovation and development of higher education digitization. Looking to the future, we should pay more attention to reshaping the education ecosystem through artificial intelligence, deepening the application service orientation, and promoting an in-depth overall transformation of higher education digitalization.

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.

Deepening and comprehensive reform?requires comprehensive reform of higher education. The necessity and urgency of comprehensive higher education reform, its goal tasks, and the?critical stages’ core?keys and breakthrough points are determined by?Chinese modernization’s tasks and historical orientation.?To deepen this comprehensive reform is about system and mechanism, specifically, the reform of “decentralization, regulation, and service”, the system reform of science-education integration, the system and mechanism reform of personnel and talents in universities, the supply-side reform of higher education, the organizational method reform of teaching and research, and the method reform of evaluation and assessment. Abolishment and establishment should go together. Establish the new before abolishing the old. The key lies in “establishment”.

The construction of the knowledge system in higher education studies is a dynamic process deeply influenced by the characteristics of the era. It is not only the result of the intertwining of history and reality but also the product of the interaction between diachronic and synchronic perspectives. This paper analyzes the particularities of higher education activities in China within the context of the characteristics of the era, elucidating the complexities of Chinese higher education from both diachronic and synchronic viewpoints. It proposes a methodology for reconstructing the knowledge system of higher education studies, including the dialectical handling of the knowledge system’s temporality and foresight, theoretical and practical aspects, instrumental and ideological dimensions, and imitation and autonomy.

Yang Xianjiang is a Marxist education theorist. He has been committed to the exploration and development of the Sinicization of Marxist educational thought in his long-term revolutionary activities and educational practice. He has written works such as New Education Outline and ABC of Education History, spreading Marxist educational thought; he guided students to participate in the revolution, formed the idea of “whole life guidance” and promoted the all-round development of young people. Pan Maoyuan is one of the earliest scholars in China studying Yang Xianjiang’s educational thought. In the process of studying, Pan Maoyuan went through two stages, that is, Yang Xianjiang’s “revolutionary” thought and “whole life guidance” thought, and made outstanding contributions to inheriting and carrying forward Yang Xianjiang’s educational thought. Under the influence of the “Xianjiang Spirit”, Pan Maoyuan continued to combine Marxist thought with the reality of higher education in China, solved various contradictions and crux of the actual educational practice, and constantly opened up a new realm of Chinese and contemporary Marxist educational thought.

The virtual teaching research section, which is a digital variant of the physical teaching research section, is a new type of higher education teaching support mechanism established by using information technology and the Internet. It is centered around research on specific subject teaching, course groups teaching, and major teaching reform themes, forming a national or regional network of experts and scholars in colleges, universities and related institutes. It is necessary for the popularization of higher education in the new era and may lead the direction of high-quality development of higher education. Virtual teaching research section has characteristics such as inter school symbiosis, loose relationships, collaborative innovation, and academic navigation. They should fully utilize their organizational advantages and play a role in coordination, promotion, platform, cohesion, and navigation. In order to function effectively, a virtual teaching research section must have academic highlands, enthusiastic academic leaders in teaching research, academic backbone, and high-quality seminar and exchange activities. Strengthening the construction of virtual teaching research sections can take measures such as holding academic forums on teaching, organizing research on cross-university education and teaching projects, leveraging network connectivity and radiation, establishing cross-university virtual operation mechanisms, and seeking enthusiastic support from institutions of higher education.

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.

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.

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.

It is a common phenomenon that faculties neglect teaching. Based on the two-dimensional framework of policy tools and teaching elements, this study takes 170 teaching policies formulated by 49 “Double First-Class” construction universities and 121 common undergraduate universities during 2013—2023 as analysis objects to explore the policy logic formed by this phenomenon. This study finds that such policies are not conducive to stimulating faculties’ teaching enthusiasm and improving faculties’ teaching ability to a certain extent. From the perspective of policy tools, coercive tools predominate while incentive and construction tools are relatively low. From the perspective of teaching elements, teaching content and teaching evaluation account for a relatively small proportion, and teaching methods are more technical than humanistic. From the perspective of two-dimensional intersection, teaching evaluation lacks incentive tools, teaching content lacks organization building tools, and teaching methods lack capacity building tools. The disequilibrium of policy tools and teaching elements and the low cross matching between them will lead to the dilemma that faculties are unwilling to teach and unable to teach. In the future, the university policy formulation should increase the use of incentive policy tools, realize the supply of teaching policy tools in the whole process and improve the matching degree between policy tools and various elements of teaching activities.

From a big country in higher education to a leading country in higher education, China has innovated theory and practice from bringing out the full potential of higher education to its high-quality development. With respect to becoming a leading country in higher education, its goals and tasks are much more definite, ideas and models are much clearer, and understandings and paths are much more confident. Entering a new era, China’s higher education has significant achievements with scale growth, structure optimization, and fairness promotion. As a result, its quality assurance and upgrading advanced effectively. Accelerating the building of a leading country in higher education, it is necessary to strengthen the systems thinking and dialectical thinking by identifying the objective and improving educational function, grasping the law of education and changing the way of development, appropriately expanding the scale and optimizing the hierarchical structure, strengthening overall planning and coordination and promoting fairness in education, building an open plateau and promoting international exchanges, so as to make a contribution on the goal of a leading country in education, science and technology, and talent.

To reverse the unscientific evaluation orientation of “performance first” and promote the construction of a positive and inclusive research culture that effectively cultivates and attracts innovative talents of science and technology, the UK released a new round of national university research evaluation-the design plan of the “Research Excellence Framework 2028” (REF 2028). REF 2028 focuses on the evaluation of the construction of scientific research culture in universities and comprehensively changes the three evaluation dimensions. Specifically, REF 2028 replaces the research environment dimension with the research culture dimension and adopts research culture evaluation of both diversity and unity; it expands the basic connotation of the dimensions of scientific research achievements and eliminates the focus on the individual performance of the scientific researchers; it expands the direction and scope of research impact dimension and pays more attention to the process of impact generation. REF 2028 is guided by the long-term perspective of cultural sustainability construction, centered on the entire process evaluation, and based on the principle of “evidence-based”. This has crucial reference significance for promoting the sustainable development of research in China, establishing a complete whole-process evaluation system, and facilitating the dual improvement of accuracy and efficiency.

Based on field theory and teaching students’ professional identity development theory, this study analyzes the relationship among academic field, practice field, teaching students’ professional identity and intention to teach. The findings are summarized as follows: firstly, academic field plays a more important role in improving teaching students’ intention to teach than practice field. Secondly, in academic field, faculty literacy and faculty’s teaching support have both direct and indirect positive effect on intention to teach, while school hardware infrastructure, economic support, and peer support only have direct effect. Thirdly, in practice field, participating in school affairs activities has a significant negative effect on intention to teach, while the quality of internship instructors can alleviate the negative influence by improving intrinsic value identity.

Coping with the social transformation brought by Artificial Intelligence is an urgent issue for the innovation in talent cultivation models. It is a rational and necessary choice for universities to actively respond to the severe challenges of the AI era by breaking the long-standing traditional talent cultivation model and innovating talent cultivation models in line with the times. Based on discussions about how AI forces universities to redefine their disciplinary concepts and expand the disciplinary developments, this paper deeply explores the necessity of updating the talent cultivation goals of universities in the AI era. It also comprehensively and deeply discusses the innovation of talent cultivation models in universities from two perspectives: conceptual innovation and path innovation.

Modern industrial college is a new organization to deepen the integration of production and education and cultivate excellent engineers. Based on the first batch of 50 modern industrial colleges in China, this paper analyzes the rise motivation and construction goal, construction logic and integration strategy, and future action path of the construction of modern industrial colleges. Our research shows that the rise motivation and construction goal of modern industrial colleges was jointly shaped by: the layout of strategic emerging industries to serve the national key areas; empowering the deep integration of industry and education to lead regional economic and social development; innovating the organizational form of engineering education and deepening the construction of new engineering; changing the talent training mode and cultivating excellent engineers in the new era. Further, the current construction logic and integration strategy of modern industrial colleges focuses on the construction of a hybrid organizational structure with multi-stakeholder collaborative participation; it emphasizes on the reverse design of talent training programs based on the OBE concept; it creates a project-based teaching paradigm that infiltrates the real engineering environment. Finally, it points out an action path to promote the high-quality development of modern industrial colleges in the future.

The key to enhancing the core competitiveness of engineering talents is to possess high-level digital competence. Guided by self-determination theory, person-environment fit theory, and based on fsQCA model, the digital competence generation pathway of 1801 students was analyzed. The results show that high-level digital competence includes four generative pathways: “role pressure-individual participation, job requirements-resource support, compound conditional collaboration, and self-induced driving”, while low-level digital competence includes three generative pathways: “pressure avoidance-self conflict, pressure constraint-resource inhibition, and sensory desensitization-passive adaptation”. Tool resources or teacher requirements is the key to the high-level development of digital competence. The imbalance of internal and external key factors drives the low-level digital competence. The diversified configuration promotes multiple personalized management mode, and the core of digital competence dynamic transformation is to enhance strengths and supplement weaknesses. It is necessary to generate paths based on individual digital competence, ensure the supply of core elements, balance the construction of internal and external key factors, and effectively provide diverse development channels.

The recent five-year statistical analysis of vocational education journals in China found that the ecology of vocational education research activities has matured, and the interaction patterns among institutions, researchers, and journals have gradually presented a stable state. Public universities and public higher vocational colleges still play a major role in this research field. The research contribution rate of public universities in 2022 exceeds that of public vocational colleges. The regional distribution of institutions and researchers still shows differentiation; specifically, the accumulation trend in the eastern region is significant and continues to strengthen, while the influence of research institutions with traditional research advantages remains stable. The distribution of vocational education research hotspots shows the coexistence of continuous attention to traditional issues and phased responses to policy hotspots.

Self-control is an essential cornerstone for the academic achievement and long-term development of college students. This study constructs a localized system of observation indicators for self-control based on a systematic review of the multidimensional theoretical concepts of self-control and the characterization of self-control deficiency among Chinese college students. Utilizing nationwide tracking data of university students, we analyzed the driving effects and mechanisms of self-control on academic achievement. Our findings indicate that a lack of self-control constitutes a collective crisis among Chinese college students, manifesting in characteristics such as difficulty in controlling efforts, failure in delaying gratification, unhealthy sleep habits, and symptoms of digital distraction, across academic, personal, and online domains. Through the mediating effect of academic engagement, self-control exerts a significant driving effect on both current and long-term academic achievement. This study provides scientific support for enhancing self-control among college students and ensuring the quality of talent cultivation in higher education.

The construction and development of interdiscipline in local industry-featured universities is an important issue in the development stage of institutionalization and professionalization of interdisciplinary construction. This paper analyzed the present situation of interdisciplinary construction of 15 “Double First-Class” local industry-featured universities in China; it is found that the interdisciplinary construction of local industry-featured universities in China is faced with difficulties such as unclear discipline orientation, imperfect organizational management system, and unbalanced development of source disciplines. According to the three dimensions of legitimacy regulation (cognitive legitimacy, moral legitimacy, and pragmatic legitimacy), the interdisciplinary construction of industry-featured universities should prioritize industrial needs, establish the three-spiral construction of “industry, problem, and interdiscipline”, perfect the system construction, construct the three-level development support mechanism of “industry cluster, research institute, and discipline cluster”, promote the industrial transformation, and make clear the development strategy of “distinctive features” plus “strong union”.

Building a learning society in the digital age, it is necessary to overall plan the collaborative innovation among vocational education, higher education, and continuing education. China has entered the stage of universal access to higher education, according to the requirement of building a learning society, such as the proportion of higher vocational education in vocational one needing to be increased; vocational continuing education insisting on equally emphasizing on vocational college education, vocational skills training, and interest courses; and higher continuing education actively deepening educational and teaching reform. On the bases of overall planning three kinds of education coordination, it should enhance the innovative ability by digitizing education, deepen the collaborative innovation between different education by digital technology innovation, and strengthen lifelong learning, lifelong education to promote the construction of a learning society.

The digital transformation of higher education does not happen overnight; it follows the logic of progressive development. In the development process of European higher education digitalization, the European Union has always maintained a high degree of sensitivity and insight into the real-time situation of social development and demand trends, with a forward-looking educational concept of timely and flexible adjustment of higher education digital development strategy. However, the digital development of higher education in Europe is affected by the diversity and dispersion of the political and economic system, which leads to the conflict between unity and coordination in the process of promoting the digital development of higher education in various countries, resulting in the difficulty of reaching a consistent pace of development among European Union member states. China has natural advantages in its political and economic system, and the digital development of higher education has made certain progress, but the transformation and upgrading of its concept and the deepening innovation of its system still needs to be further optimized. We should learn from the concepts and lessons of the digital development of higher education in Europe, review the key points of the digital transformation of higher education, clarify the skill-based talent training orientation, build a self-driven digital transformation culture, and strengthen the digital transformation training of education and teaching.

The integration of research and teaching is the philosophy of modern universities, especially for research universities. From the transmutation of this philosophy, it always takes talent cultivation as the starting point and foothold and also causes organizational changes and innovations in higher education. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the evolution of the philosophy of integration of research and teaching in China has gone through four periods: embryonic period, exploration period, development period, and innovation period. From the current practice of cultivating top-notch innovative talents in China, in order to realize the integration of high-quality research and teaching resources, universities have taken advantage of research experts, organizational innovation, and research platforms, and formed three integrated education modes of research and teaching, namely, master-led, academy system cultivation, and platform-dependent. Top-notch innovative talents are the most important talent resource and the main force of scientific and technological innovation; giving full play to the advantages of cultivating talents by research is the proper and necessary way to cultivate top-notch innovative talents. However, it is still needed to continuously improve in various aspects such as cultivation philosophy, cultivation program, cultivation process, and cultivation system, so as to increase the effectiveness of integration of research and teaching and comprehensively enhance the ability of independent cultivation of top-notch innovative talents.

The deep integration of industry, academia, and research is the key to the construction of a leading country in higher education, and it is a necessary requirement for the transformation of knowledge production mode and scientific and technological innovation mode. Based on the existing studies, we defined the conceptual connotation of the deep integration of industry, academia, and research. Subsequently, from the aspects of promoting the development of universities, promoting the high-quality development of manufacturing industry, and leading the industrial transformation and upgrading through innovation, we discussed the relationship between the deep integration of industry, academia, and research and the construction of a leading country in higher education. Finally, from the three aspects of culture, system, and organization, we put forward the action strategy of promoting the deep integration of industry, academia, and research to build a leading country in higher education.

The number, structure, and elasticity of undergraduate learning time have a significant correlation with academic quality and achievement, and the student’s course schedule can reflect the learning time more truly, concretely, and objectively. Based on the analysis of 381 individual course schedules of undergraduates in 96 universities and 95 majors, it is found that the proportion of undergraduates’ learning time in class is relatively large, the fragmentation of learning time is obvious, and the degree of freedom of learning time is small. On this basis, three problems hidden in the undergraduate learning time are put forward: the in-class bias of learning time brings severe challenges to autonomous learning; the fragmentation of learning time has a serious impact on deep learning; the limitation of learning time freedom makes it difficult to implement personalized education.

Meritocracy pursues the primacy of meritocracy, and its logic of competition, efficiency, control and exchange breeds many pitfalls, creates winners and losers dichotomies, and reinforces the instrumental connection between the world of work and higher education. The work ethic and aesthetics of the world of work have in turn exacerbated the pervasiveness of meritocracy, which in turn has triggered a crises of meritocracy disorientation in higher education. Under the coercion of meritocracy, higher education has been instrumentalized in the world of work, becoming a kind of competitive capital, giving rise to such paradoxes as “learning for work” and “professionalism as work”, breaking the myth which allows students to obtain decent and satisfactory jobs through meritocracy, and giving rise to the alienated role and function of the university as an arbiter of opportunities and a classification machine, which has highlighted the “significance” of the university diploma as a functional “identification”. To get out the disorientation, firstly, we should break the shackles of “instrumentalization” and clarify the mission of higher education from its origin. Secondly, we should identify the shackles of “meritocracy” and rethink the significance and value of education and work in transcending meritocracy. Finally, we should get rid of the dilemma of “alienation”, promote the resonance between the world of work and higher education, and return to the pursuit of a better life.

University governance capability is the basis of the high-quality development of universities, while university system construction is the embodiment of university governance capability. As a common means of university governance at present, performance appraisal reflects the management thinking of pursuing efficiency; although it plays a certain role in promoting university governance from experience management to system management, its negative role begins to appear. Through analyzing the method and logic of performance appraisal of scientific research and teaching, this paper finds that there is “too rigid” experience governance in university governance capability, which leads to “a lack of warmth” in institutional governance, “concept deviation” in cultural governance, and other predicaments. In the process of promoting the high-quality and connotative development, any university needs to go beyond the overly-institutionalized performance management and abandon the performance appraisal characterized by the “work point system”. To improve university’s academic ecology, it is necessary to enhance the governance concept and cognition level of university leaders, explore the science-oriented university governance, and build the modern university governance model with Chinese characteristics.

Suzhi education is a type of educational thought and mode with Chinese characteristics, but the understanding of its concept and connotation is inconsistent. In the practice of Suzhi education, there are two modes: Suzhi education in the concept of cultural Suzhi education and Suzhi education based on the general education. But these two seem to fail covering the current situation and trend of the development of Suzhi education. It is needed to endow it with new connotations in terms of educational objectives, contents, methods, and momentum, and conduct in-depth analysis in terms of educational objectives, processes, and essence. We aim to seamlessly integrate cultural Suzhi education into the Suzhi education system with Chinese characteristics and effectively integrate general education and professional education within the Suzhi education framework. On the basis of retaining the traditional advantages of Suzhi education, Suzhi education with Chinese characteristics in the new era should strengthen the value orientation of patriotism, focus on the cultivation of digital literacy, use value-added evaluation methods, and achieve multi-mode development. Universities should be demand-oriented, improve the system, accurately position according to institution’s conditions, dynamically adjust, continuously advance, and avoid blind comparisons and one size fits all, so as to make greater contributions to building an educational powerhouse and cultivating new generations worthy of the great task of national rejuvenation.

Teachers team plays a crucial role in the building a leading country in education. To enhance teachers team building, the Ministry of Education has initiated the “National Excellence Plan”, which involves high-level universities in cultivating high-quality educators for primary and secondary schools. However, during the implementation process, pilot universities encounter various challenges including enrollment selection, curriculum design, practice mode and so on. It is found that the high-level universities in the United States implement teacher education by adopting both purpose and ability examination of enrollment selection, setting up a diversified and flexible curriculum system with distinct priorities, designing a closed-loop practice model with progressive layers and building interdisciplinary and experienced faculty teams. Therefore, it is recommended that pilot universities participating in the “National Excellence Plan” should prioritize assessing applicants’ study objectives and abilities, enhance the systematization and flexibility of the curriculum system, developing an immersive field practice mode, and enhancing communication and collaboration among teachers to ensure the quality of new teacher education.

The concept of person-environment fit offers a novel perspective for understanding and optimizing the cultivation of academic creativity among doctoral students in China. An analysis of questionnaire data and interview materials from doctoral students revealed the following: Supplementary fit has a weak positive effect on self-assessed creative abilities and a negative effect on creative achievements, contradicting traditional assumptions of person-environment fit theory. This may reflect the unique context of doctoral training. Regarding demand-ability fit, the requirement for publishing papers positively influences creative achievements but does not affect self-assessed creativity, potentially exacerbating the “involution” in publication. The demands for innovative research methods and knowledge, as well as originality in dissertations, positively impact self-assessed creativity. Qualification exams and course task requirements lack a significant positive influence on academic creativity and are easily matched. In terms of supply-demand fit, financial support, research projects, and peer support positively affect academic creativity, yet the adequacy of financial support provision urgently needs improvement.

Based on the self-determination theory and the professional identity theory, this paper constructs a model of college students’ learning engagement, differentiates student groups according to the sense of curriculum acquisition, and analyzes the role of professional identity and learning motivation in different groups and their influencing mechanisms. The potential profile results show that students can be divided into “shallow strugglers”, “ordinary explorers” and “deep participants” according to the level of sense of curriculum acquisition. The results of the chain mediation model show that the learning engagement model in different groups presents different results. The “shallow strugglers” take the learning machine as the only motivation for learning engagement, while the “deep participants” have diversified sources of motivation for learning engagement. Based on this, curriculum design should pay attention to the needs of students, avoid the “expert blind spot effect”, and establish a diversified view of learning motivation, “match” professional identity with the sense of curriculum acquisition, and take the sense of curriculum acquisition as the fulcrum to achieve a positive change in students’ learning types.

Against the background of global technological change, economic transformation, and demographic change, the demand for skills is in a rapid dynamic change, and promoting skills transformation has become a highly concerned response measure of the international community. As an important carrier to realize the effective supply of skills, higher vocational education, in the process of promoting the transformation of skills in China, has the problems such as weak orientation on the goal of skill cultivation, insufficient adaptability in the process of skill cultivation, imbalance of fairness in the skill cultivation system, and lack of systematic evaluation of skill cultivation. Based on this, the practical approaches are proposed to promote skills transformation in higher vocational education: refining the goal of talent training and establishing a standard updating mechanism; Adjusting the professional teaching content to meet the needs of industrial development; Optimizing the allocation of educational resources and promoting equal educational opportunities; Strengthening the core position of skills and carrying out multiple systematic evaluation.

School-enterprise cooperation is an important form of cultivating technical and skilled talents in vocational education. Teachers play a significant role in this process. However, research has revealed that the enthusiasm and effectiveness of teachers’participation in school-enterprise cooperation is still unsatisfactory. Based on grounded theory, in-depth interviews were conducted with 25 teachers from 12 vocational colleges in Jiangsu Province. The original data was encoded word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence, resulting in 74 conceptual tags, 21 initial categories, and 6 main categories. The “Behavior and Influencing Factors of Vocational College Teachers’ Participation in School-Enterprise Cooperation” model was developed, revealing teachers’ dynamic decision-making process of “willingness-performance-benefit” in school-enterprise cooperation, as well as the impact of “school support”, “enterprise need”, and “student performance” on teachers’ participation at different stages. In order to further optimize the efficacy of vocational college teachers’ participation in school-enterprise cooperation, efforts should be made to transform teachers’ own concepts and improve their service capabilities, stimulating their willingness to participate. The evaluation index system for teachers’ participation in school-enterprise cooperation should be established with a focus on teachers’ participation performance. In addition, the incentive and guarantee mechanisms for teachers’ participation in school-enterprise cooperation should be improved to enhance their benefits from participation.

Based on the perspective of organizational characteristics and individual characteristics, combined with cognitive-emotion system theory, a linear regression method was used to construct an integrated model of mentor guidance effectiveness under innovation scenarios, and investigate the influence mechanism of tutor guidance on master students’ innovation behavior. The results show that: the tutor’s guidance has a significant positive effect on the innovation behavior of master students; innovation self-efficacy and positive emotion play a part of mediating role between tutor’s guidance and master’s innovation behavior; from the perspective of organizational characteristics, the organizational innovation atmosphere perceived by master students has a significant positive strengthening effect on the relationship between tutor guidance and innovation behavior; from the perspective of individual characteristics, the feedback seeking orientation of master students has a significant positive strengthening effect on the relationship between tutor guidance and innovative behavior. In order to improve the training quality of master students, we should strengthen the supervision of tutor’s guidance behavior and pay attention to the improvement of organizational innovation atmosphere. We should pay attention to the improvement of the quality of tutor guidance, the diversity of tutor guidance function and the internal training needs of different types of master students and stimulate their innovation potential.

Under the context of National Pilot Program for Cultivating Top-notch Talent in basic disciplines 2.0, stimulating the far-reaching academic aspirations of “top-notch students” is one of the core objectives of China’s elite talent cultivation. Qualitative research based on grounded theory is conducive to an in-depth study of the factors influencing the development of academic aspiration among “top-notch students” and their mechanisms of action. Through in-depth interviews and data analysis of 15 “top-notch students” from S University, it was found that the academic aspirations of “top-notch students” include educational aspiration and academic career aspiration, which are influenced by four core elements: academic interest, self-efficacy, outcome expectation, and environmental perception. These elements interact with each other, constructing a complex mechanism of influence.

Interdisciplinary education is beneficial for cultivating college students’ interdisciplinary knowledge structure, interdisciplinary thinking ability and interdisciplinary quality, it is an important way for local university with industry characteristics to construct first-class undergraduate education. Addressing the problems of the lack of consensus on interdisciplinary education, insufficient interdisciplinary education resources, and the lack of interdisciplinary grip and system guarantee in the interdisciplinary educational practice of textile majors in local universities with industry characteristics, it is necessary to cultivate first-class talents through interdisciplinary education in local universities with industry characteristics by establishing the cultivation goal of diversified talent, highlighting the leading role of disciplines and majors with advantageous, adhering to the key factors of curriculum, faculty, and platform, and establishing a guarantee mechanism for interdisciplinary education operation.

Achieving integrated innovation among government, industry, academia, and research is a crucial issue that needs to be addressed in the development of new forms of productivity. Based on the TOE framework, this study analyzes the driving paths of collaborative innovation among these sectors using a sample of 114 publicly listed companies in emerging digital intelligence fields, employing fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis. The results indicate that high-quality productivity levels are generated through four main paths: “multi-dimensional and comprehensive driving, government-industry-academia collaboration, enterprise-led, and environment-supported”.Government innovation support policies are identified as significant driving factors for companies to overcome their own limitations and external resource constraints. Collaboration between industry and academia, along with an increased proportion of academic executives, enhances the opportunities for typified cooperation among different entities and paths. In the future, it is essential to harness the collaborative innovation capabilities of all parties, strengthen the government’s guiding and coordinating role in the innovation system, establish a supply-demand mechanism for industry-academia-research cooperation that aligns with the developmental needs of enterprises, and explore the creation of a distinctive government-industry-academia research cooperation system that fits regional development characteristics and leverages enterprise advantages.

The degree system is a basic education system in our country and the cornerstone of building a leading country in higher education. Focusing on the connotation and needs of a leading country in higher education, and from the perspective of building a leading country in higher education, it is necessary to break through the dual framework of academic degrees and professional degrees and build a four-level (i.e., associate-bachelor’s- master’s-doctoral) and three-category (i.e., scientific, applied, and vocational) with Chinese characteristics; it will further improve our country’s degree system, promote the comprehensive advancement of law-based education in our country’s education, meet the diverse needs of social development, and achieve the all-round development of people. As the first education law in the People’s Republic of China, the Degree Regulations have symbolic and practical significance that has long exceeded the scope of degree system construction. Research on degree levels and degree types is of great significance to the construction of the higher education legal system and the construction of a leading country in higher education.

The importance of university interdisciplinary work in knowledge production and serving economic and social needs is widely recognized by all sectors of society. However, there are still three issues: firstly, the conceptual relationship of “interdisciplinary”, “interdisciplinary research”, and “interdisciplinary discipline” in the context of localization is not yet clear; secondly, in practice, the distinction between “interdisciplinary research” and “interdisciplinary discipline” is vague and the phenomenon of arbitrary intersection is common; thirdly, the process of interdisciplinary evolution has not yet corresponded to foreign interdisciplinary classification research. Discipline is a key dimension in the interdisciplinary evolution of universities, and it is also an essential differentiation of the evolution from “interdisciplinary research” to “interdisciplinary discipline”. The interdisciplinary process in universities is an interaction between different disciplines; its instantaneity reflects in different types based on the degree of integration. Therefore, based on the disciplinary dimension, this study explores the concepts and relationships among “interdisciplinary”, “interdisciplinary research”, and “interdisciplinary discipline” in order to strengthen communication and dialogue on interdisciplinary research both domestically and internationally and promote the development of interdisciplinary research in universities.

Against the backdrop of the national emphasis on the integration of science and education, vocational education, closely aligned with industrial development and directly serving the economy, holds the potential for active participation in the transfer and transformation of scientific achievements and other social services. The construction of Proof of Concept Centers in vocational colleges is a key measure to promote this integration. This study comprehensively examines the background, essence, and functions of Proof of Concept Centers, investigates their specific implementation in various countries and regions, and analyzes the construction logic of these centers in vocational colleges from perspectives such as functional positioning, technology maturity requirements, service scope, and capital integration. Using the Proof of Concept Center at Shenzhen Institute of Information Technology as a primary case study, this paper proposes a developmental pathway for these centers in vocational colleges, aiming to provide innovative ideas for their high-quality development and support the effective implementation of science and education integration in the field of vocational education.