Geographic Lock-In of Higher Education in China: Spatial Structure, Driving Mechanisms, and Implications for Regional Sustainability

This study examines whether higher education development (HED) in China remains geographically locked in a core–periphery structure over 2002–2021 despite long-standing policies promoting balanced development. Using a composite assessment of HED and multiple spatial-inequality diagnostics, we identify strong persistence in the national spatial hierarchy and limited restructuring over time. Results indicate: (1) a stable top tier concentrated in a small set of leading cities, with the top-ranked cities exhibiting a stability index above 0.90, alongside a persistent lagging group; (2) an education-quality “center of gravity” anchored along the North China–East China axis, with a reduced migration distance from 76.58 km to 16.63 km, indicating only modest cross-regional movement; (3) pronounced clustering in major eastern coastal urban agglomerations, contrasted with a broader and weaker distribution in the west; and (4) regionally differentiated constraints—HED in eastern China is jointly driven by economic scale, market demand, and innovation investment, while the central region exhibits no stable dominant driver, the western region remains primarily constrained by economic scale and consumption conditions, and the northeastern region is increasingly shaped by demographic structure and consumption dynamics. These findings indicate that the spatial differentiation of HED is jointly shaped by economic, demographic, industrial, and innovation-related factors. For sustainability-oriented governance, the findings suggest that narrowing gaps requires moving beyond scale expansion toward targeted capability building, cross-regional collaboration, and institutional reforms that improve peripheral regions’ capacity to convert inputs into sustained quality and outcomes. Data granularity remains a limitation; future research should integrate micro-level data and comparative evidence.