12,000 Programs Closed at Chinese Universities
Universities in China are undergoing a comprehensive restructuring process to align the higher education system with the age of artificial intelligence and the country’s development goals. According to data from China’s Ministry of Education, between 2021 and 2025, higher education institutions in the country revoked or suspended 12,200 undergraduate programs. During the same period, 10,200 new programs were launched. As a result, more than 30 percent of university programs in China were reorganized.
Program closures have been particularly observed in fields such as the arts, humanities, foreign languages, and management. Some of these fields are considered to have weakened relevance in the labor market or to produce more graduates than current demand requires. Newly launched programs, meanwhile, largely focus on areas related to artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing, data governance, new energy vehicles, and future industries. Some universities have also begun opening programs in emerging fields such as “embodied intelligence,” where artificial intelligence is integrated with physical systems and robots.