Abstract: Local institutions of higher learning are an important part of higher education in China. However, due to their geographical location,they are at disadvantage in terms of allocation of resources. In recent years,with the shortage of recruitment,the decline of freshmen registration rate and the difficulty of employment of graduates,the problems of local institutions of higher learning in the running of school are emerging and they come to a bottleneck of development. To solve this problem, we must realize the transformation of local colleges and universities from four aspects:give priority to the specialty management so as to highlight the characteristics of a school; clarify the orientation of talent cultivation and enhance students' application ability; fully generate teachers' enthusiasm for reform; make good use of new technologies such as the Internet to create a resource-sharing platform. On this basis,it is possible to achieve sustainable development of local institutions of higher learning and to promote the coordinated development of higher education in China.

Key words: higher education, local colleges and universities, transformation and rise, "double first-class" strategy, talent cultivation orientation