Artificial Intelligence is not just changing the way people work — it is changing the very courses students choose to study. As AI adoption rises rapidly across consulting, finance, marketing, and management, students are increasingly reluctant to spend large sums of money on courses that offer no guarantee of employment in the future. Last month, several American universities reduced MBA course fees, and now an even bigger shift has begun in China. To keep pace with the changing job market, Chinese universities are eliminating outdated courses and replacing them with cutting-edge technology programmes centred around AI.
According to a report by the South China Morning Post, universities across China are overhauling their education systems on a massive scale. Courses deemed obsolete are being scrapped, with priority now being given to new technology disciplines. These changes are aligned with the Chinese government’s stated goal of becoming a global leader in next-generation industries such as Artificial Intelligence, robotics, and advanced manufacturing.
Even as the number of degree-holding graduates entering the Chinese job market continues to grow, many are struggling to find employment suited to their qualifications. Youth unemployment in China currently stands at over 16 percent. At the same time, AI is fundamentally reshaping the skills that companies are looking for. As a result, universities are stepping back from arts, humanities, foreign languages, and management courses — fields where market demand has weakened and opportunities have shrunk.
In their place, China is introducing new courses tailored to the needs of its industrial sector. Among these, Embodied Intelligence has emerged as a particularly high-demand new major. Around nine universities in China have already launched this programme. According to data from China’s Ministry of Education, between 2021 and 2025, Chinese universities scrapped approximately 12,200 undergraduate courses while adding 10,200 new ones — meaning more than 30 percent of all courses have been restructured.
However, experts are sounding a word of caution. Simply replacing one degree with another will not solve the deeper problem, they warn. To truly keep pace with the speed at which technology is evolving, far more fundamental reforms are needed within the education system itself. They also point out that many of the courses now being discontinued were themselves introduced only a few years ago and were scrapped before they had a chance to mature fully. Rather than repeatedly reshuffling course groupings, experts suggest building a more flexible education framework — one that allows students to continuously acquire skills in line with the evolving needs of industry.