Promoting close and sustainable cooperation between schools, enterprises, and government has become an important concern in many countries. However, the factors that influence the cooperation between schools, enterprises, and government have not been sufficiently explored in previous studies. Therefore, based on evolutionary game theory, in this paper, we construct a tripartite evolutionary game model of schools, enterprises, and government in order to analyze the strategies of different players and their influencing factors. The results show that the main factor that influences the stability of the strategies of schools and enterprises is the reward for positive cooperation from sources other than the government, and the main factor that influences the stability of the strategy of the government is the benefits from a positive cooperation strategy under the scenario where schools cooperate with enterprises. Some suggestions to promote sustainable cooperation between schools, enterprises, and government are proposed at the end.

Promoting close and sustainable cooperation between schools, enterprises, and government has become an important concern in many countries. Based on evolutionary game theory, this paper constructs a tripartite evolutionary game model of schools, enterprises, and government in order to analyze the stability of strategies of the different players. The results show that the main factor that influences the stability of the strategies of schools and enterprises is the reward of positive cooperation from sources other than the government, and the main factor that influences the stability of the strategy of the government is the benefit of positive cooperation strategy under the scenario where schools cooperate with enterprises. Therefore, the government should focus on implementing more effective policies, such as increasing the incentives and penalties, improving the mechanism for managing conflicts, ensuring the fairness of benefits distribution, and clarifying the responsibilities of different departments; schools should focus on providing more practical curricula and programs for students, training high-quality teachers, and perfecting talent cultivation to meet the needs of enterprises; and enterprises should focus on providing job experiences for students and transforming the results of schools’ teaching and theoretical research into practical productivity.

Sustainable cooperation between schools and enterprises is crucial to maintaining a dynamic balance between the supply and demand of talents and driving the advancement of new quality productive forces. As a result, facilitating school–enterprise cooperation has become an important concern in many countries. However, there remains a gap in understanding the approaches taken by central and local governments to foster such cooperation through the lens of evolutionary game theory. Therefore, this paper develops a quadrilateral evolutionary game model involving schools, enterprises, the central government, and local governments by building the payoff matrix and calculating expected payoffs of different strategies to analyze the conditions under which governments can effectively promote school–enterprise cooperation. Our findings indicate that benefit is a decisive factor that affects the strategies of all parties. Increasing incentives and penalties from the central government and local governments can stimulate school–enterprise cooperation, but these measures are not sustainable in the long term. Additionally, the impact of the central government’s incentives and penalties on local governments in promoting school–enterprise cooperation is limited. Enhancing policy efficacy and the practical outcomes of school–enterprise cooperation is essential, which not only strengthens the bond between schools and enterprises but also ensures deep and enduring governmental involvement. Some suggestions are put forward at the end.

Facilitating sustainable cooperation between schools and enterprises has become an important concern in many countries. However, there remains a gap in understanding the approaches taken by central and local governments to foster such cooperation through the lens of evolutionary game theory. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a quadrilateral evolutionary game model involving schools, enterprises, the central government, and local governments, to analyze the conditions under which governments can effectively promote school-enterprise cooperation. Our findings indicate that benefit is a decisive factor that affects the strategies of all parties. When the benefits of cooperation are sufficiently attractive, schools and enterprises are inclined to cooperate with each other independently of governmental intervention. While increasing incentives and penalties from the central government and local governments can stimulate school-enterprise cooperation, these measures are not sustainable in the long term. Additionally, the impact of the central government’s incentives and penalties on local governments in promoting school-enterprise cooperation is limited. Enhancing policy efficacy and the practical outcomes of school-enterprise cooperation is essential, which not only strengthens the bond between schools and enterprises but also ensures deep and enduring governmental involvement.