This study uses a dual-frontier data envelopment analysis model and regression analysis to evaluate the efficiency of China’s higher education system, including its general education and vocational education subsystems and to analyze their driving factors. The research results show that there is significant regional disparity and structural imbalance in the overall efficiency of China’s higher education system. As for the subsystems, except for a few regions showing coordinated efficiency, most provinces have a mismatched development feature of one strong and one weak subsystem. Furthermore, the regression analysis shows that the efficiency of the higher education system is synergistically driven by four dimensions: government, economy, society and universities. In summary, efforts to improve efficiency should involve establishing a multi-stakeholder governance framework led by government investment, within which universities optimize resource allocation through strategic academic resource development, and the broader economic and social environment provides an indispensable foundation for enhancement. Policy formulation should recognize the regional and subsystem differences and adopt corresponding policies.
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