China’s universities are undertaking a massive reshuffling of their academic offerings as part of a drive to better align higher education with the nation’s development goals – culling thousands of so-called obsolete degrees in favour of new, tech-focused programmes.

The sweeping campaign comes as China races to become a global leader in a slew of hi-tech “future industries” and solve a severe graduate jobs crisis, which has left millions of young people struggling to find work.

Between 2021 and 2025, China’s higher education institutions revoked or suspended 12,200 undergraduate degree programmes while introducing 10,200 new ones, meaning that more than 30 per cent of the nation’s university programmes underwent adjustments, according to Ministry of Education data cited by Xinhua.

Many of the new programmes, meanwhile, are closely aligned with Beijing’s economic development goals. For instance, nine universities have added new majors in embodied intelligence, which dovetails with a national drive to speed up the integration of next-generation AI into the real economy.

Universities have faced pressure to adapt to rapid changes in the Chinese economy over recent years, as graduate numbers have soared to record levels but many have found their degrees offer little help when it comes to finding work.