A review and future prospects of higher education's role in shaping talent mobility amid the talent dividend transition

As China transitions from leveraging its “demographic dividend” to harnessing a “talent dividend”, the cultivation, utilization, mobilization, and management of talent have garnered unprecedented attention. Higher education, as a critical node in the talent's mobility chain, plays a dual role—first in talent cultivation and later in talent allocation and regional innovation. Since the 1960s, the world has entered an era of rapid expansion of higher education. The migration of university students—encompassing both educational migration and employment migration—centered around the locations of universities, has become increasingly dynamic. This migration significantly promotes the spatial agglomeration of human capital across countries and regions, sparking extensive discussions on the role of higher education in shaping human capital flows. This paper reviews the existing literature on educational and employment migration, systematically elucidates the relationship between these two stages of migration, and identifies diverse patterns of human capital movement among places of origin, higher education, and employment. Focusing on the influence of higher education institutions and their regional characteristics on the spatial distribution of human capital, scholarly perspectives coalesce around two contrasting theories: the “node theory” and the “hub theory”. Moreover, this paper highlights China's unique institutional contexts and their impact on the migration of university students. Future research can integrate multidisciplinary theories and research paradigms, conduct in-depth analyses on how China's higher education institutions and their regional characteristics shape student migration, and pursue international comparative studies to further dissect the role of institutional environmental factors.