The present application relates to the field of wireless communications, and in particular, to an indication method and device for a modulation coding scheme. It is used for solving the problem that in an existing LTE / LTE-A system, a higher-order modulation scheme cannot be supported, thereby limiting the further improvement of throughput in an application scenario of a high signal-to-noise ratio. The method of the embodiments of the present application includes: according to the channel quality and a first MCS table, a network side determining an MCS grade corresponding to a channel assigned to a terminal; and by means of first indication information, notifying the terminal of the determined MCS grade, so as to indicate to the terminal to determine a modulation scheme and coding rate used by the channel assigned thereto according to the MCS grade, wherein the first MCS table at least contains corresponding records of an MCS index and a TBS index corresponding to a modulation scheme with a modulation order greater than 6. The embodiments of the present application introduce a higher-order modulation scheme into an existing LTE / LTE-A system, improving the spectrum efficiency.