China Reshapes Universities Amid AI and Jobs Pressure

In September 2026, China unveiled a 10-year plan to reform its universities amid job-market pressures facing nearly 13 million college graduates, AI disruption and a slowing economy. The plan will disband dozens of graduate programmes and classify universities by their focus: research, application-oriented work or skills development.

Programmes shift towards emerging industries

Between 2021 and 2025, universities eliminated or suspended 12,200 undergraduate programmes and introduced about 10,200 new ones, affecting more than 30% of undergraduate programmes. New courses increasingly cover artificial intelligence, data science, semiconductors and robotics; cuts have chiefly affected humanities, social sciences, some foreign languages and management.

By November 2026, the Communication University of China in Beijing had suspended more than a dozen programmes, including translation, sociology and photography, and introduced intelligent audiovisual engineering.

AI integration and employment indicators

China’s April 2026 AI+ Education Action Plan sets a 2030 goal for integrating AI across education, including teaching, assessment, research and management. In August 2026, unemployment among people aged 16–24, excluding students, was 18.9%. By October, China’s core AI industry exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan (about US$178.23 billion) and had more than 6,200 enterprises.

Important Facts for Exams

• Programme oversight: University governing bodies commonly approve new instructional programmes and can cancel or alter existing ones, providing a formal route for curriculum restructuring.
• Undergraduate major controls: The Ministry of Education’s undergraduate-major catalogue permits ordinary major additions through filing, while majors on the national-control list require formal approval.
• Vocational education law: China’s 2022 Vocational Education Law states that vocational education has the same importance as general education and encourages cooperation between vocational schools and employers.
• Double First-Class initiative: China’s Double First-Class initiative selects both universities and individual disciplines for development, making discipline-level support distinct from institution-wide university reform.