Abstract：Higher education in China has been developing rapidly since the enrollment expansion of colleges in 1999, and till 2001, China's higher education scale had ranked the first place in the world which surpassed that of U. S. for the first time. Since then, the development of China's higher education shows the following features: giving priority to develop higher education, increasing national investment continuously, having formed the atmosphere of respecting teachers and valuing teaching, improving technological innovation capacity, strengthening international exchanges and cooperation, and attaching more importance to undergraduate education. Though the enrollment expansion of colleges promotes higher education development to a certain degree, it also brings about some challenges: the transition from elite education to mass education requires more urgent reform of higher education, and the fast expansion of education scale makes the problem of inadequate national investment more serious, the situation of colleges' lagging connotation construction worse, the structure of talent cultivation more unreasonable.Henan Polytechnic University is facing four opportunities in the process of development: the upgrading transformation of national economic development, construction of the central plains economic zone and founding of Zhengzhou airport economic zone, the trend of green mining and clean utilization of coal industry, Jiaozuo's strategy of transforming into a model city of economic transition in the central plains economic zone and developing relying on technology. At the same time, Henan Polytechnic University is faced with the following four challenges: the intense competitive pressure from the development of rival universities, inadequate national investment, introduction and cultivation of high-level talents, construction of national key disciplines and national key Laboratories. Therefore, new development ideas and strategies are a must for Henan Polytechnic University to realize a breakthrough development.

Keyword：higher education;Henan Polytechnic University;development opportunities;strategies;