Mixed-ownership school-running is regarded as a pivotal institutional innovation for China to deepen the integration of industry and education and stimulate the vitality of school operation. However, its internal governance practice often falls into the predicament of “formal integration but substantive disconnection”. The crux lies in the lack of a scientific typology of governance models, leading to overly general policy recommendations. Adopting the normative theoretical research method, this paper integrates the incomplete contract theory and the legitimacy mechanism of neoinstitutionalism to construct a two-dimensional governance typology with the depth of property right integration and the ownership of dominant power as the core coordinates. The research finds that different types of mixed-ownership higher vocational colleges face distinctly different core governance contradictions and are constrained by multiple legitimacy demands. On this basis, differentiated optimization principles are proposed: for the resource cooperation - school-led type, the model of “power and responsibility list + collaboration platform” should be implemented; for the legal entity - enterprise-led type, a framework of “public welfare priority and dynamic checks and balances” must be established. This typology framework provides a theoretical tool for clarifying complex governance practices and points out the key path from formal integration to substantive co-governance.