Abstract: Abstract: The construction of “Double First Class” is an important strategic deployment for China’s higher education reform. Since its implementation in 2017, the central and local governments at all levels have provided a large amount of resource support for selected universities, which has had a significant impact on the quantity and quality of scientific research work in universities. Use the double difference research model to compare and analyze the panel data of two equal time periods (2011-2021) before and after the launch of the “Double First Class” construction, and explores the impact of the first round of “Double First Class” construction on the scientific research work of 107 comprehensive and science and engineering universities from the two dimensions of the quantity and quality of scientific research output of universities. The research results indicate that the “Double First Class” policy has achieved significant construction effects in both promoting the quantity and improving the quality of scientific research output in universities; In addition, the study further found that the construction of “first-class disciplines” has formed significant positive spillover effects in the first round of construction through policy demonstration effects and local supporting incentives, especially in quality dimensions such as highly cited papers, top 1% papers, and the Category Normalized Citation Impact. The catching up speed of non-selected universities has exceeded that of experimental group universities. The paper recommended to better leverage the systematic impact and driving role of the “Double First Class” construction on national higher education, strengthen top-level policy design, deepen the reform of higher education evaluation in the new era, and promote the realization of the strategy of building a strong education country at a high level.

Key words: Difference-in-Differences (, DID)