China Retools Its Universities for the New Economy
By Zhang Can
A great academic reshuffle is under way at China’s universities, where a government-led push to align higher education with economic needs is eliminating thousands of degree programs and leaving legions of professors facing uncertain futures.
In recent disclosures for the 2025 academic year, more than 150 universities have proposed canceling majors long considered staples of a college education, including marketing, international trade and automotive engineering, according to a tally by MyCOS Research Institute, a third-party education consulting firm.
The sweeping changes are forcing faculty in discontinued departments to scramble for new positions — transferring to related fields, teaching general education courses, or taking on administrative roles in libraries and offices. For many, the transition comes with a pay cut, a loss of professional identity and a career path that has suddenly grown dim.
“We live in a state of constant anxiety,” said Mei Mei, a foreign language professor at a Beijing university whose program was eliminated last year. “Our salaries have been cut, and we don’t dare ask for an explanation. After all, our jobs are on the line.”
The overhaul is part of a national strategy to modernize China’s workforce. A 2023 reform plan issued by the Ministry of Education and four other government bodies called for optimizing or eliminating roughly 20% of all university degree programs by 2025 to phase out those that no longer meet economic and social needs. The directive also mandates the cancellation of any major that has not enrolled students for five consecutive years.
The culling has accelerated dramatically. In 2024, Chinese universities eliminated 1,428 undergraduate programs, a 25-fold increase from the 57 programs cut a decade earlier in 2014.
Between 2020 and 2024, the most frequently canceled undergraduate majors were information management and systems, public administration, and marketing, according to MyCOS data.
The pressure is particularly acute in the liberal arts and some business fields, where graduates have faced a tougher job market. According to disclosures for 2025, the programs most slated for removal are concentrated in business administration, foreign languages and design.
Ren Na, a faculty member at a university in Fujian province, said her college’s Japanese language major stopped accepting students last year. While she and three colleagues were kept on to teach Japanese as a second language, four others were told they had to find new roles. Ren, though safe for now, worries she could be next.
“The employment problem for students in the liberal arts, economics, and management is quite prominent right now,” said Mao Yufei, an associate professor at the School of Labor Economics at Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing. He said universities are adjusting by focusing on their comparative academic strengths.
Professors say the criteria for cancellation go beyond weak job placement rates. A major’s fate can also be determined by its ability to attract students as their first choice, the percentage of faculty with doctorates, and the number of tenured professors, which affects a department’s ability to secure research funding.
As old programs are shuttered, universities are rushing to add new ones that align with Beijing’s strategic priorities. For 2024, schools added 1,839 new degree programs, outpacing cancellations.
Shenyang Aerospace University, for example, announced it would apply to add four new majors for 2025 — including low-altitude economy engineering and intelligent aircraft technology — while dropping six others, including English, Japanese and vehicle engineering.
For some faculty, this pivot offers a path forward. At Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, many professors in the new School of Artificial Intelligence hail from the School of Information and Telecommunication Engineering, bringing a communications-heavy focus to the AI curriculum, a student told Caixin.
But for professors in fields like literature and the social sciences, the barriers to entry for new, highly technical programs are often insurmountable.
In June, the School of Economics and Management at Hunan University of Arts and Science circulated a memo asking faculty in discontinued programs like finance and marketing to state their preferences for a new role. The options included teaching in a similar department, taking a technical position, moving to a university administrative post, or becoming a student counselor.
When Mei’s program was cut, she said administrators offered to help faculty find administrative work. Some of her colleagues tried to launch a new research institute or develop universitywide elective courses, but those efforts failed.
Mei now teaches general education classes instead of specialized courses for her major. Her class sizes have tripled, but her income has fallen. “The performance bonus portion of my salary, about one-fifth of the total, is gone,” she said. With her contract up for renewal at the end of the year, she fears that if she cannot secure a new role, “I’ll have no choice but to leave.”
Even professors in programs that are still running feel the ground shifting beneath them. Wei Nuo, who teaches dramatic literature at a university in Xi’an, said her department enrolled just one class of 17 students this past fall, down from its usual two classes of nearly 30 students each. Half of them were transfers who didn’t choose the major.
“I feel like in the near future, professors at purely liberal arts universities are going to lose their jobs,” Wei said.
To navigate the crisis, academics should focus on interdisciplinary research and adopt new digital and AI skills, said Mao, the labor economics professor.
From the university’s perspective, he said, institutions must have clear strategic plans, provide faculty with transition periods and training, and offer professional and psychological counseling.
“The school should establish a system that combines top-down planning with bottom-up feedback,” Mao said. “This allows all teachers to understand the school’s development goals and adjust their own research and teaching directions in time.”
Contact editor Lu Zhenhua (zhenhualu@caixin.com)
caixinglobal.com is the English-language online news portal of Chinese financial and business news media group Caixin. Global Neighbours is authorized to reprint this article.
Image: smallaworld – stock.adobe.com