Moving Forward: Industry-Education Collaboration in the Intelligent Era

Ten years ago, China's Ministry of Education (MOE) launched the University-Industry Collaborative Education Program. This signaled the start of a journey of collaborative talent cultivation. In this program, the government stipulates overarching policies and implementation directives while enterprises provide support and engage with universities to jointly develop projects and share the project achievements to augment the projects' influence. This method has successfully brought all of these parties together and helped continually deepen their collaboration.

In the ten years that have followed, the program has yielded strong results. The program team is headed by the MOE and supported by the concerted efforts of experts, universities, and numerous enterprises. As their collaborations advanced, the areas covered by the program have expanded.

The program started with a fund of CNY500,000 and eight enterprises. Now, it has grown to include over 2,000 enterprises and 1,100 universities. About CNY4 billion has been directly invested into the program, along with roughly CNY24 billion worth of software/hardware platforms and devices provided. More than 100,000 projects have been set up, involving over 300,000 teachers and benefiting millions of students. We are proud of the dynamic talent pipeline the program has nurtured.

Thanks to these outstanding achievements, the program has been included in China's undergraduate education and teaching evaluation index system, and has become a national benchmark of industry-education collaboration.

Huawei has been actively participating in this program since 2017. Over the past seven years, Huawei has invested more than CNY300 million by providing practice resources and funds, and established nearly 800 projects, covering more than 200 undergraduate universities.

Huawei has also worked with educators to develop nearly 100 online courses and dozens of tutorials. Some of these courses have been recognized as first-class courses in China among other awards. Huawei has also been named an Excellent Partner of the University-Industry Collaborative Education Program by the MOE and the Expert Team for many consecutive years and Huawei currently ranks first among enterprises in the number of Outstanding Projects supported.

Since 2024, in order to improve the quality of project collaboration, achievements, and management, the Expert Team has adjusted the program's coverage, goals, content, proposal methods, operation models, and accreditation methods under the guidance of the MOE's Department of Higher Education. The Expert Team has also built a three-level implementation system involving the MOE, provinces and cities, as well as universities and enterprises, and has continuously deepened the system both in depth and breadth.

In addition, in accordance with the goals of China's National Education Conference, we are also exploring new models, contents, and methods for the program's future development. This exploration aims to help transform the nation's digital education from its 3C's strategy (Connection, Contents, and Collaboration) to a new 3I's strategy (Integrated, Intelligent, and International).

The specifics of 3I's for university-industry collaborative education are as follows:

Integrated

An integrated approach is important to strengthen project management. Taking an integrated approach means focusing on enhancing the three-level system, building support platforms, consolidating resources, and fostering an integrated ecosystem. In this way, synergies can be created between experts, projects, universities, enterprises, platforms, and data. These synergies will better position us to build a new ecosystem for industry-education collaboration.

Enterprises and universities need to work together to draw upon their areas of strength, run projects with a platform mindset, and use these platforms to build integrated industry-education collaboration environments both internally and externally. During this process, they should continue building their own project case libraries and keep them open for joint development and sharing with other stakeholders in the ecosystem. This will foster the development of teaching resources and tools.

Success stories of collaboration between enterprises and universities should be shared on project platforms using standardized templates and interfaces. By integrating these platforms, we can form national and provincial project case libraries that systematically present content, workflows, and management mechanisms.

In the future, the University-Industry Collaborative Education Program platform will be a comprehensive platform supporting multiple functions including information release, project inquiries, monitoring and management, industry-academia interconnection, service support, and data analysis. This platform will enable the construction of a larger ecosystem for industry-education collaboration.

We hope that Huawei will continue its role as an exemplary enterprise in the University-Industry Collaborative Education Program and keep exploring new frontiers in collaboration models, platform building, project practice, and management.

Intelligent

Universities are embracing AI for higher education and enabling education with foundation models. This means intelligence should be a cornerstone of the University-Industry Collaborative Education Program. We need to use intelligent technologies such as foundation models and big data to enhance student and faculty capabilities and to improve all aspects of education, including learning, application, management, evaluation, training, and certification. AI will help us tap into new opportunities in industry-education collaboration.

Intelligent learning: Leveraging the integrated project platform, we can develop projects supported by foundation models. Then, we can help large numbers of universities and enterprises jointly create featured teaching courses and virtual experiment environments. In this way, we can promote the application of foundation models in classroom teaching. Teachers can also use foundation models to develop intelligent teaching materials and tools that facilitate students' independent and personalized learning.

Intelligent application: We need to actively explore AI-enabled industry-education collaboration models and methods for cultivating problem-solving capabilities using foundation models. We can also use big data analytics and foundation models to build AI talent cultivation hubs and training centers. These hubs and centers will set the stage for developing innovative IT talent with skills in foundation models and generative artificial intelligence (GAI), which are essentially the capabilities needed in the future market.

Intelligent management: We can use big data and foundation models for project statistics analysis, management, and governance. AI can be used to perform preliminary reviews of project guidance and promptly detect problems in project execution. Big data analytics can also be used to intelligently check duplications and analyze project achievements.

Intelligent evaluation: Project evaluation also needs to become intelligent, and AI needs to be used for capability improvement and the evaluation of such improvement. We need to study and develop the standards, training methods, and evaluation systems for using GAI to solve problems and rate capability levels. This will drive a shift in our education system, transforming it from being knowledge-focused to capability-focused.

We are currently working with Huawei to study the ICT position capability assessment model and certification system, and hope that the study findings can help improve and evaluate students' capabilities through AI.

International

The MOE advocates the internationalization of China's digital education. The University-Industry Collaborative Education Program therefore needs to give full play to the international and regional advantages of different enterprises, and focus on quality international collaborations that follow clear guidelines to elevate the collaborations to a new stage.

Specifically, these guidelines call on enterprises and universities to respond to China's calls to action and promote international industry-education collaboration both with countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and other countries around the world. We should use the advantages of large multinational enterprises such as Huawei in their international layout and operations to help achieve this. For example, through the Huawei ICT Academy project, Huawei has worked with universities and enterprises outside China to jointly develop new courses, jointly design projects, train educators and vocational professionals, jointly run schools, and mutually recognize credits. The achievements and experience of this kind of industry-education collaboration have increased the international influence of our projects and set a benchmark for the internationalization of China's digital education and industry-education collaboration.

Industry-education collaboration is an important way to further the development of emerging engineering education. Collaborative education is also an effective way to cultivate innovative talent with sustainable competitiveness in a constantly evolving industry landscape. There is still much potential we have yet to unlock in industry-education collaboration. Let's work together towards this future and unleash the potential of ICT talent cultivation.