Digital Transformation in Student Affairs: Overcoming Socio-Technical Barriers in China’s “One-Stop” Student Communities

Abstract

Under the strategies of “Digital China”, higher education institutions are undergoing profound digital transformation. However, current initiatives, specifically the “One-Stop” student community model, face challenges such as data silos and collaborative inertia. This study addresses the gap between technical implementation and institutional governance by adopting a conceptual analysis approach grounded in Socio-Technical Systems (STS) theory. Through a systematic review of national policy guidelines (2019-2025) and implementation reports from pilot universities, five structural barriers were identified: value misalignment between instrumental and educational rationality, technical fragmentation through persistent data silos, organizational inertia resisting networked collaboration, bottlenecks in technical empowerment, and lack of distinctiveness in educational models. To address these socio-technical misalignments, a four-tiered integrative framework—Philosophy, Technology, Mechanism, and Ecology—is proposed, advocating for the joint optimization of values, infrastructure, processes, and culture. By shifting the focus from instrumental rationality to value rationality, this study offers a theoretical pathway for sustainable digital governance in higher education. Although the “One-Stop” student community model is specific to the Chinese higher education system, the underlying socio-technical challenges it reveals—such as data fragmentation, organisational silos, and the tension between administrative efficiency and student-centred values—are widely shared across higher education systems globally, suggesting that the analytical framework may inform digital governance reform in diverse institutional contexts.