Driven by the rise of artificial intelligence, shifting employment trends, and structural changes in industry, Chinese universities have been accelerating the elimination of academic programs in recent years. Traditional majors in management, languages, the arts, and select engineering and humanities disciplines have become the primary targets for cuts.
Shanghai University of Electric Power recently reviewed a restructuring plan proposing to add three new programs — resource recycling science, smart grid information engineering, and energy economics — while discontinuing enrollment in environmental engineering, optoelectronic information science, and information and computational science, and fully eliminating its public administration department.
The trend is widespread. Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics halted enrollment in eight programs in 2025, including urban management, Japanese, and logistics management, while scrapping its public administration and digital media arts departments entirely. Hubei University of Arts and Science similarly announced plans to eliminate several programs including logistics engineering and automotive service engineering.
Statistics cited in the report show that between 2020 and 2024, the five most frequently eliminated majors nationwide were information management and information systems (160 programs cut), public administration (138), information and computational science (123), marketing (104), and product design (93).
Arts programs have also faced heavy cuts. At this year’s national political advisory sessions, a university party secretary made headlines by announcing the elimination of 16 undergraduate programs and tracks, including translation and photography. Jilin University suspended 19 programs, six of them in the arts. Analysts note that AI has particularly disrupted the design and arts fields.
Sichuan University has trimmed its total number of programs from 144 to 105 since 2019 — a reduction of 39 — as part of a broader national push to expand science, engineering, and medicine programs while scaling back oversaturated fields like economics, management, and the arts.
Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), April 4, 2026
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202604040059.aspx