More university majors align with innovation economy goal

A new batch of university majors announced recently by China’s Ministry of Education sheds new light on how China’s higher education sector is accelerating efforts to cultivate a highly educated workforce that is more in line with the country’s strategic goal of becoming a high-innovation economy by 2030.

Updated by the government every year, the 2024 Catalogue of Undergraduate Majors in General Colleges and Universities
released in March has undergone its biggest amendment, with changes to a total of 3,389 programmes approved and 24 new majors added, affecting 54 colleges and universities. The changes will be reflected in their 2024 undergraduate enrolment plans.

According to a new reform announced by the Ministry of Education this time last year, 20% of all university majors in China will have been ‘adjusted and optimised’ by 2025.

The new majors underscore the government’s national strategic focus by including disciplines such as high-performance semiconductor science and engineering, and agricultural biological breeding technologies – both areas of key strategic interest. There is also a focus on cutting-edge science and key technologies, covering electronic information, intelligent surveillance engineering, and intelligent marine equipment.

But there are also some more unusual new majors, such as ecological restoration and preservation at Nanjing Forestry University, which include the ecological restoration of former mining areas. New disciplines in sports science include sports healthcare and football, the latter reflecting China’s ambitions in this area.

Link to employment rates

The latest adjustments to university majors also put employment prospects under the spotlight, given high unemployment rates for graduates in recent years. A Ministry of Education circular this year identified 223 majors with low employment rates, urging that disciplines that no longer “adapt to economic and social development” should be phased out.

The number of majors in fields such as management and the arts has been reduced.

The mismatch between graduate supply and demands of the job market is now seen as a red flag. In March, the Shanghai Municipal Government asked the city’s universities to cut enrolment in majors with too many graduates, singling out art, management, law, and some foreign languages as having an oversupply and a discrepancy with actual employment places.

The document also outlined Shanghai’s growth plans for disciplines including science, engineering, agriculture and medicine, to bolster industries “in urgent need” of regional development.

Majors related to economic development

Last year, many new undergraduate majors were also closely linked to the development of cutting-edge technologies. They included earth system science introduced by Tsinghua University, biomaterials by South China University of Technology, Shenzhen and future robots and electric transportation by Southeast University, Nanjing.

“In recent years, the university sector has sped up efforts to adjust majors, which are directly related to economic and social development,” Chu Zhaohui, research fellow at China’s National Academy of Educational Sciences, Beijing, told state broadcaster CCTV. “Some majors that meet domestic needs have thus gained more attention,” said Zhaohui.

He added that the adjustment of university majors also needed to keep up with the pace of corporate innovation and be better integrated with enterprises.

Although the government has identified innovation as a top priority for national development since as early as 2011, the pace has intensified over the past several years. China wants to advance “to the forefront of innovative countries” by 2030 and become a strong innovative power by 2050.

“In the past, the government [could] invest in these industries through large funds, but now every sector needs to play a part,” said Tilly Zhang, technology analyst at Beijing-based research firm Gavekal Dragonomics. “In education, universities are called upon to cultivate as many innovative talents as possible. We’ve seen the pace picking up,” she said.

Zhang noted that the government’s campaign has also been spurred by talent drains in some critical technology sectors in the past decade. “In the case of semiconductors, companies have been poaching a lot of talent from regions such as Taiwan with high pay. A local gap really needs to be filled,” she told University World News.

Competition for STEM talent

In the race for STEM talent, a growing list of universities have introduced enrolment policies to shortlist students who perform exceptionally in relevant subjects. Under a national pilot plan to strengthen fundamental sciences, 36 universities now grant special consideration to candidates who meet certain standards in mathematics, physics, and chemistry in the university entrance exam known as the Gaokao.

This year, the concept of “new quality productive forces” was for the first time included in the Central Government’s annual work report. According to the official definition, it aims for high-quality innovation-driven development. This requires fostering emerging industries, transforming and upgrading traditional industries, and developing the digital economy.

In March, during the joint sessions of the National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China’s Education Minister Huai Jinpeng said China needed top-notch talents in basic disciplines, interdisciplinary disciplines and emerging disciplines, which can drive innovation “at the source”, as well as engineering and technical talents for the new industrialisation.

Huai said during the NPC session that higher education played a “leading role” in talent cultivation and innovation. “We will combine development trends in science and technology with social needs, optimise [university] disciplines and majors, and further deepen the reform of talent training and evaluation mechanism,” Huai said, adding: “These are very important tasks.”