A Study on the Synergistic Mechanism between Sino-Foreign Cooperative Education and the “Double First-Class” Construction—Based on the Practical Exploration of a College in Guangdong Province

Abstract

Under the national “Double First-Class” strategy and the goal of building a strong educational nation, Sino-foreign cooperative education has become an important approach to internationalizing higher education. A key question now is how such cooperative education programs can align with the “Double First-Class” initiative to achieve synergistic effects. Based on over two decades of Sino-foreign cooperative education practice at a college in Guangdong Province, this study adopts synergy theory to build a theoretical framework for the coordinated development of such programs and the “Double First-Class” initiative. From the perspectives of talent cultivation internationalization, faculty development, and disciplinary competitiveness, it analyzes the internal mechanisms of their synergistic evolution. The results show that Sino-foreign cooperative education enhances students’ global competitiveness through an “internationalization-at-home” model, optimizes the international structure of the faculty by combining external recruitment and internal training, and promotes interdisciplinary integration and connotative development via two-way resource interaction. This paper puts forward three synergy mechanisms: strategic coupling, resource sharing, and quality assurance. It also explores optimization paths in institutional construction, resource integration, and model innovation, aiming to provide theoretical and practical references for similar institutions to deepen the integration of international education and “Double First-Class” construction.