NeurIPS 2025

Preference-driven Knowledge Distillation for Few-shot Node Classification

Xing Wei, Chunchun Chen, Rui Fan, Xiaofeng Cao, Sourav Medya, Wei Ye

Main figure for Preference-driven Knowledge Distillation for Few-shot Node Classification

Abstract

Graph neural networks (GNNs) can efficiently process text-attributed graphs (TAGs) due to their message-passing mechanisms, but their training heavily relies on the human-annotated labels. Moreover, the complex and diverse local topologies of nodes of real-world TAGs make it challenging for a single mechanism to handle. Large language models (LLMs) perform well in zero-/few-shot learning on TAGs but suffer from a scalability challenge. Therefore, we propose a reference-driven nowledge istillation (PKD) framework to synergize the complementary strengths of LLMs and various GNNs for few-shot node classification. Specifically, we develop a GNN-preference-driven node selector that effectively promotes prediction distillation from LLMs to teacher GNNs. To further tackle nodes' intricate local topologies, we develop a node-preference-driven GNN selector that identifies the most suitable teacher GNN for each node, thereby facilitating tailored knowledge distillation from teacher GNNs to the student GNN. Extensive experiments validate the efficacy of our proposed framework in few-shot node classification on real-world TAGs. Our code is available at.

Benchmark Results

Tested on 2 datasets

Tables show presented results in global context (best 3 papers + GCN + MLP).

Heterophilic Graphs

#ModelAccuracy ↑Paper
1
P^2GNN
0.9672 ±0.0147
2
DoG
0.9660 ±0.0210
3
GPF-plus
0.9583 ±0.0419
34
MLP
0.9230 ±0.0070
53
GraphSAGE
0.9000 ±0.0365
109
PKD_Llama # LN 5
0.8631 ±0.0050
This paper
153
FairGKD
0.8485 ±0.0110
This paper
180
PKD_Llama # LN 3
0.8333 ±0.0070
This paper
186
T2
0.8283 ±0.0200
This paper
233
MTAAM
0.8081 ±0.0400
This paper
239
PKD_Llama # LN 1
0.8036 ±0.0130
This paper
343
GAugLLM / # LN 5
0.7381 ±0.0220
This paper
363
Self-training / # LN 5
0.7262 ±0.0240
This paper
373
EGNN / # LN 5
0.7172 ±0.0290
This paper
404
GCNII / # LN 5
0.6879 ±0.0430
This paper
408
AGST / # LN 5
0.6845 ±0.0080
This paper
427
KDGA
0.6667 ±0.0150
This paper
436
BGNN
0.6566 ±0.0200
This paper
456
T4
0.6364 ±0.0010
This paper
461
LLMGNN / # LN 5
0.6282 ±0.0360
This paper
465
MSKD
0.6263 ±0.0200
This paper
485
Voting / # LN 5
0.6131 ±0.0200
This paper
527
Random / # LN 5
0.5893 ±0.0110
This paper
575
T1
0.5343 ±0.0410
This paper
581
IceBerg / # LN 5
0.5000 ±0.0490
This paper
600
T3
0.4519 ±0.0250
This paper
#ModelAccuracy ↑Paper
1
P^2GNN
0.9541 ±0.0272
2
ACM-GCN
0.9480 ±0.0380
3
RF-GCN
0.9429
24
MLP
0.9136 ±0.0070
138
SAGE
0.8269
261
MTAAM
0.7268 ±0.0100
This paper
368
FairGKD
0.6105 ±0.0240
This paper
395
BGNN
0.5860 ±0.0330
This paper
404
T1
0.5804 ±0.0110
This paper
433
KDGA
0.5439 ±0.0290
This paper
474
MSKD
0.5127 ±0.0420
This paper
521
T2
0.4629 ±0.0090
This paper
531
T3
0.4462 ±0.0430
This paper
566
T4
0.3273 ±0.0280
This paper
SOTA performance (not significantly different from the best) Baseline / comparison (this paper) Global context (other papers)