The Disappearance of These Majors in China... Low Employment Rates Cited as the Main Reason

Management Engineering, Logistics Management, and Human Resource Management among Majors Being Eliminated

This Year, Adjustment Rate for Majors Exceeds 10% for the First Time

"Interdisciplinary Majors Combining 'AI + Major' Expected to Continue Increasing"

Chinese universities are consecutively eliminating business-related majors with low employment rates.

Photo for article understanding. Pixabay

According to a report by Yonhap News on July 30, citing Chinese economic media outlet Yicai, "This year, business administration has emerged as a main target for adjustment on the list of majors to be discontinued at several universities in China."

In the notice on '2026 Undergraduate Major Applications' released by Shanghai University of Finance and Economics on July 24, management engineering, public service management, logistics management, and applied statistics were slated for discontinuation. Nanchang University in Jiangxi Province has decided not to recruit new students in six majors starting this year: International Chinese Education, German, Human Resource Management, E-commerce, Convention Management, and Fisheries and Aquaculture. Yunnan University in Yunnan Province will eliminate Human Resource Management, Donghua University in Shanghai will eliminate Convention Management, and Tianjin University of Commerce will eliminate Information Management·Information Systems.

These adjustments are also taking place at the local government level. Universities in Jiangsu Province have established 151 new undergraduate majors while closing 55, including E-commerce, Tourism Management, Marketing, Business Management, Public Service Management, and Insurance Studies. In the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, 17 universities inaugurated 53 new majors while discontinuing 23, citing reasons such as a saturated demand or low employment rates. Jinan University has abolished five majors, including Editing and Publishing, Information and Computational Science, and E-commerce, while opening Quantum Information Science and Flight Control·Information Engineering as new majors.

Between 2021 and 2025, Chinese universities established 10,200 new undergraduate majors, while either closed or stopped recruiting for 12,200 majors, resulting in a greater number of discontinued majors. The cumulative adjustment rate has exceeded 30%, and for the first time this year, it has surpassed the 10% range within a single year.

According to "Mycos Research Institute," a Chinese higher education research institution that compiled university major changes last month, the top major for elimination was Marketing, followed by Public Service Management. The institute noted that the majors targeted for adjustment tend to have low employment rates, are offered at numerous universities, or are misaligned with the personnel actually demanded by industry. This includes certain language, arts, engineering, humanities, and business administration majors.

On the other hand, newly established majors share common characteristics as well. These include narrowly focused fields such as Customs Inspection or International Cruise Management, areas aligned with AI and digital transformation such as Business Artificial Intelligence or Digital Public Governance, and majors that reflect national strategic tasks such as Rural Governance or Accessibility Management for People with Disabilities. Ding Changpa, Associate Professor of Economics at Xiamen University, observed, "As AI transforms various industry ecosystems, it is also infiltrating academic fields," forecasting, "Interdisciplinary majors combining 'AI + major' will continue to increase going forward."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.