📋 12000 degrees

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Find out what China is doing with "China’s universities cut 12,000 ‘obsolete’ degrees " story. Use some paywall bypasses to get the full story.

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▶ Tool: fetch_url [url='https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/335]…

▶ Tool: fetch_url [url='https://thedeepdive.ca/china-scraps-12000-degrees-in-b]…

▶ Tool: fetch_url [url='https://www.thinkchina.sg/society/chinas-unprecedented]…

▶ Tool: fetch_url [url='https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/3270670/chinas-unive]…

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Here's the full story I've assembled from multiple sources (SCMP, The Deep Dive, and a very detailed Caixin Global piece via ThinkChina):

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What China Is Doing: Cutting 12,000 "Obsolete" Degrees & Adding 10,000 New Tech-Focused Ones

The Scale of the Overhaul

Between 2021 and 2025, China's higher education institutions revoked or suspended 12,200 undergraduate degree programs while introducing 10,200 new ones — meaning over 30% of all university programs were adjusted. In 2024 alone, 1,428 programs were eliminated — a 25-fold increase from a decade ago. Since the 18th Party Congress (2012), China has added 21,000 new programs while cutting/suspending 12,000.

What's Getting Cut — and Why

The axe has fallen hardest on:

• Arts & Humanities
• Foreign languages
• Management programs
• Public administration, information management, marketing, product design
• Preschool education (due to China's falling birthrate)

The drivers: 1. Graduate unemployment crisis — youth unemployment has exceeded 16%, with millions of graduates finding their credentials useless. 2. AI transforming the labor market — Beijing views traditional liberal arts degrees as poorly aligned with a tech-driven economy. 3. National strategic priorities — degrees that don't serve the country's development goals are on the chopping block.

What's Being Created

New programs are heavily concentrated in:

• Embodied intelligence (AI integrated into physical systems) — 9 universities added this
• Low-altitude technology and engineering — fast-tracked after a Politburo meeting called for developing the "low-altitude economy"
• Geriatric medicine and health
• Smart manufacturing
• AI + traditional fields (e.g., Chinese literature + AI dual degrees)
• Disciplinary Inspection and Supervision (anti-corruption training for the Communist Party)

The Ministry of Education created a "green channel" fast-track for high-priority programs, bypassing normal application deadlines.

The Human Impact

The ThinkChina/Caixin piece provides vivid on-the-ground reporting:

• Wang Nan, a university instructor, learned her department was being eliminated under a provincial order to cut 40% of programs. Her university axed 15 majors in one stroke. Students rushed to transfer; professors with no classes were reassigned to admin or forced to learn entirely new subjects.
• Meng Ying, a preschool education instructor at a vocational college, had her program cancelled due to falling birthrates. Some of her students dropped out to work in nail salons, as livestreamers, or in factories.
• At a university in northeastern China, broadcast/TV majors were suspended years ago but not officially eliminated, leaving faculty in limbo — some now teach introductory courses outside their expertise to meet required hours.
• Zhang Wen, a freshman in a Chinese literature + AI dual-degree program, is bullish: "If I can master this, I won't have any worries about employment."

Concerns & Critiques

Even within China, experts express concerns:

• "New wine in old bottles" — Some worry the centralized system just relabels old courses rather than creating genuine innovation. China's academic disciplines are among the most finely divided in the world.
• Short-term utilitarianism — Prof. Tian Xianpeng at Jiangnan University warns that cancelling humanities based purely on employment metrics is a mistake.
• Homogenization — Wang Dingming, president of Lanzhou University of Arts and Science, warns that universities all chasing the same "hot" majors creates toxic competition. "Some unpopular subjects are, in fact, the very places where a university's soul is nurtured."

The Big Picture

This is the third major restructuring of Chinese higher education since 1949: 1. 1950s — Soviet-style, heavy engineering focus 2. Late 1990s — Mass expansion amid market reforms (enrollment surged from <10% to >60%) 3. 2012–present — Quality-over-quantity pivot to align with AI and "future industries"

Beijing's message is clear: degrees that don't serve the country's development priorities are on the chopping block. The overhaul aims to fix the mismatch between what universities produce and what the job market demands, but it raises profound questions about the long-term role of the humanities and whether top-down restructuring can truly foster innovation.