Local colleges and universities are the main body, the main undertakers and executors of national higher education. The composition of connotative development includes all the elements of the goal, function, subject, object and governance, as well as the base level and promotion level of the constituent elements, possessing the characteristics of objective existence, knowledge-acquisition process, implicitness and explicitness of behavioral consequence, and input-output complexity. The essence of connotative development is the improvement of the quality of constituent elements, not the increase of quantity. In view of the problems that exist in the process of promoting the development of connotation, such as the lack of grasp of the essence, the high orientation of objectives and functions, the lack of subjective initiative, and the unreasonable evaluation mechanism, the local colleges and universities should set up the concept of people-oriented connotation development to mobilize the subjective initiative by raising and taking measures. At the same time, the local colleges and universities should promote the connotation construction in a down-to-earth manner, taking the development level of the constituent elements as the basic focus, focusing on the construction of the teaching staff, the reform of the teaching mode and teaching method, the construction of the curriculum, the subject and specialty platform and the teaching and scientific research platform.