The article tries to approach the decentralization reforms of higher education from four aspects and draws the following conclusions. Firstly, the decentralization reform of higher education is a project of institutional innovation, and the project cannot avoid path-dependency, so there is no universal model for the reforms. Secondly, an effective legal regulation mechanism is required in the reforms and it needs to adjust with the conditional changes. The reforms should therefore be conducted in a gradual way. Thirdly, since there is a bottom line for decentralization, the national macro-regulation is necessary in the reforms. And lastly, the reform is not only decentralization of routine power but of financial power, and the principle of comparative dispersion of routine power and comparative centralization of financial power is followed.