Nine universities in Shanghai were officially approved as pilot institutions for integrating professional education with standardization training, a national initiative driven by the Shanghai Municipal Administration for Market Regulation. This marks the formal establishment of a collaborative mechanism involving universities, businesses, and government bodies, designed to address the long-standing difficulties companies face when recruiting graduates. With this new framework, industries can more efficiently access composite standardization experts who have been specifically trained to meet their needs, effectively bridging the final gap between academic education and industrial application.

Companies in key sectors such as artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, biomedicine, humanoid robots, embodied intelligence, and high-end equipment frequently encounter a common challenge. New graduates often possess solid technical skills but require extended on-the-job training to fully grasp a company's advanced technologies, practices, and experience before they can translate them into standards. This weakness in standardization, despite technical strength, slows down corporate participation in global standard-setting and hampers the internationalization of their products.

Zhao Haiyuan, deputy secretary of the Party Committee and vice president of Shanghai Geotechnical Investigations & Design Institute Co., Ltd., expressed his deep concerns as an executive in the survey and design industry. He noted that past graduates had strong professional foundations, but the engineering survey and design sector is heavily reliant on standards and regulations. Since recruits were unfamiliar with the regulatory framework, it took two to three years of mentoring before they could work independently, creating a clear mismatch between talent supply and actual demand. Even internships lasting one to two months only exposed students to minor administrative tasks rather than systematic development. What the industry truly needs, he emphasized, are versatile professionals who understand both technical disciplines and standards, are familiar with management systems, and can deliver results that meet client and regulatory requirements.

To resolve the sharp contradiction between strong industrial demand and inadequate talent supply, the market regulator has proactively built a university-industry service platform and established an international standardization training base, moving the classroom directly to the industrial frontline. Students can now engage with real standard development scenarios during their studies, allowing them to start working immediately upon graduation and significantly reducing the training cycle for standard transformation talents. Zhao believes that under the integration of industry and education, students may join major corporate engineering projects in their junior or senior years, working alongside engineers to deeply integrate regulatory standards with professional knowledge, greatly shortening corporate training periods and helping companies secure outstanding students early.

The initiative also aims to resolve the disconnect between university curricula and industry practices. For instance, while companies have fully adopted precision instruments such as total stations, measuring robots, 3D laser scanners, and drones for surveying, university classrooms may still be teaching theodolites and levels. If these gaps are not addressed, companies will struggle to recruit, students will face employment difficulties, and industrial upgrading will be hindered.

Developing an international standard used to rely on a master-apprentice model, with the process from using standards to debating, drafting proposals, and consolidating opinions taking up to a decade, remaining at the level of personal experience. For industries to go global and for standards to lead, these hidden experiences must be made explicit. The market regulator is now guiding universities to break down international standard rules, standard development methods, corporate standard systems, cross-border compliance, and professional foreign language communication into course modules. Nine pilot universities, including Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tongji University, East China Normal University, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai University, Shanghai Polytechnic University, Shanghai University of Electric Power, and Shanghai Technical Institute of Electronics & Information, have systematically added core standardization modules covering fields such as artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, biomedicine, surveying engineering, business administration, and credit management.

Fudan University will use standardized industry-education collaboration to break down barriers with the industrial sector, transforming cutting-edge industrial needs into educational standards to cultivate internationally-minded versatile talents and build high-level professional teams capable of understanding and participating in international rule-making. East China Normal University will integrate standardization into its business administration discipline, using the Shanghai Tourism Standardization Technical Committee platform to incorporate standard drafting and industry research into teaching practice, with its teams already leading the development of two ISO international standards. Shanghai Technical Institute of Electronics & Information will embed SEMI international standards and national semiconductor standards into professional courses for the integrated circuit industry, partnering with enterprises to develop teaching cases and cultivate technical personnel who understand both technology and standards.

Liu Chun, executive vice dean of the National Academy of Excellent Engineers at Tongji University, stated that original basic-innovation talents are no longer sufficient for social development; what is needed now are outstanding engineers and interdisciplinary composite talents. Engineering talent cultivation cannot be confined to campus but must extend to the frontline, to be trained in the midst of action. He pointed out that standards are the primary form of translating industrial issues, citing engineering projects going global as an example where lacking a voice in standards makes work arduous. Therefore, standards must be implemented through industry-education integration and incorporated into university micro-majors. His goal over three to five years is to cultivate a group of outstanding engineering talents who understand standards, can write standards, and possess cross-disciplinary capabilities, providing core strength for industry going global.

Meanwhile, the market regulator is promoting the establishment of training bases in districts such as Pudong, Putuo, and Jiading, with universities and international standardization technical bodies and enterprises working together. Secretariats of relevant international standard organizations have signed agreements with Fudan, Jiao Tong, Tongji, ECNU, Shanghai University, and Donghua University, providing young students with a complete pathway for theory, training, and international exchange. Senior international standardization experts will lead students on real projects, aligning student growth with industrial needs, transforming classroom knowledge into practical skills while helping companies lock in outstanding young talent early, customizing composite standardization professionals as required.

Gong Chao, an international business major at Shanghai Polytechnic University's School of Economics and Management, exemplifies this approach. After joining the International Standardization Research Institute for an internship, he followed experts to various ISO activities, progressing from organizing meeting minutes and translating materials to independently drafting standard clauses and responding to comments from overseas experts, gradually entering the core circle of international standard development. He has become one of the world's youngest secretaries of an international standards technical body working group. He noted that industry experts understand technology but not rules, while standards specialists lack industrial data, creating a pressing need for intermediaries. If schools can turn guidelines, secretariat practices, and standard development processes into coursework and provide direct channels for corporate training, students can start with a solid foundation and become versatile standardization professionals faster, which is the very pain point the integration of industry and education aims to solve.

For China to transition from a major manufacturer to a strong manufacturer, it must address the shortage of international standardization talent by cultivating composite professionals who understand standards, technology, and foreign languages. Shanghai has already accumulated experience in this area. Shanghai Polytechnic University has established a bachelor's-master's training system for standardization, with over 300 students currently enrolled in standardization engineering and work-study integration pilot programs. The university's work-study approach alternates between campus and enterprises, achieving a 100% paid internship rate for students, with partnerships for industry-education integration with institutions such as the Shanghai Robot Industry Technology Research Institute, Shanghai Institute of Quality Inspection and Technical Research, and Shanghai Quality Science Institute. The municipal market regulator has also trained hundreds of corporate standardization directors through advanced seminars, helping companies strengthen their standard systems and international participation capabilities.

Wang Yiyang, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Administration for Market Regulation, stated that the next step will involve continuously improving the university-enterprise-government coordination mechanism, cultivating more international standardization experts through industry-education integration, providing talent and intellectual support for Shanghai to become a new international standardization highland, enabling more Shanghai companies to participate in international rule-making and standard development, better serving industry going global, and contributing to global governance.