China has launched a three-year push to overhaul universities, emphasizing AI, the sciences and new data tools to align degree programs with national development goals.

The plan, announced Thursday by the Ministry of Education, calls for building a national big data platform to track supply and demand across university programs, the first of its kind in China.

It also stresses stronger training for faculty, greater coordination between undergraduate, graduate and vocational programs, and new emphasis on the fundamental sciences alongside artificial intelligence.

Special focus will go to “urgently needed disciplines and majors.”

Liu Hong, a research fellow at Fudan University’s Institute of Development Studies, told domestic media that strategic fields such as integrated circuits, AI and biotechnology — along with emerging sectors such as the “low-altitude economy,” humanoid robotics, and autonomous driving, are expected to see rapid growth supported by targeted resource allocation.

The push comes as China grapples with record numbers of graduates and growing concern that university programs are out of step with labor market demand. Officials say the new approach is meant to narrow that gap by steering resources into disciplines tied to the country’s strategic industries.

Education experts say the reforms are expected to trigger a new wave of university restructuring.

Zhang Duanhong, deputy director of the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai’s Tongji University, told local media: “Decisions on which disciplines to offer and which new programs to develop will rely not only on expert judgment but also on real-time data analysis.”

The shift, he said, addresses the long-standing gap between existing university programs and labor market demand.

The new initiative builds on a 2023 reform plan that required universities to adjust 20% of their degree programs by 2025 to add high-demand majors and cut underperforming ones, a target the ministry says has already been achieved.

Over the past two years, universities have created thousands of new doctoral, master’s, undergraduate and vocational programs, while scrapping or suspending thousands of others — including civil engineering, public administration and foreign languages — in a shift away from oversupplied majors toward strategically important fields.

Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.

(Header image: Participants at the 27th China Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Competition in Hefei, Anhui province, where over 800 students from 49 universities showcased nearly 200 full-sized robots, Aug. 24, 2025. VCG)