Developing new-quality agricultural productivity is the key to promoting urban-rural integration and achieving urban-rural harmony.Higher education bears the responsibility of talent cultivation， technological innovation，and social services.Fully leveraging its potential to empower new-quality agricultural productivity holds important practical significance for improving the level of urban-rural integration and promoting national common prosperity.Based on statistical data from 30 provinces/cities in China from 2012 to 2023，this paper constructs a fixed effect model to empirically test the impact of higher education on new agricultural productivity.Furthermore，it constructs a mediating effect model and a moderating effect model to examine the mechanism and path of this impact.The results show that higher education has a significant positive impact on new agricultural productivity，though notable regional disparities exist. Among the influencing mechanisms，population urbanization plays a modest mediating role，while industrial structure upgrading plays a positive moderating role.Therefore，it is necessary to optimize the structure of higher education to provide strong momentum and important support for the development of new-quality agricultural productivity.Tailored approaches should be adopted to stimulate the distinctive effects and innovative vitality of this new productivity，while coordinated efforts are needed to ensure the effective formation and sustainable development of higher education’s empowering role in agriculture.