▲ China
Chinese universities are increasingly abolishing or adjusting business-related majors due to low employment rates and other factors, local economic outlet Yicai reported on July 30.
Yicai explained that business administration is emerging as a primary target for adjustment in the list of majors slated for elimination across various universities in China this year.
Shanghai University of Finance and Economics announced in an undergraduate major establishment application notice released on July 24 that it will abolish four majors that have suspended recruitment for five years.
The majors being abolished are engineering management, public business administration, logistics management, and applied statistics.
Nanchang University in southeastern Jiangxi Province decided not to accept new students starting this year for six majors: international Chinese education, German, human resource management, e-commerce, convention economic management, and aquaculture.
Yunnan University in the southern province of Yunnan has decided to abolish its human resource management major, while Donghua University in Shanghai plans to eliminate its convention economic management major, and Tianjin University of Commerce will scrap its information management and information systems major.
According to data compiled and released last month by MyCOS, a Chinese higher education research institute, on major changes at Chinese universities, marketing and public business administration majors took the top two spots for abolished majors.
The research institute pointed to changes in the job market as the direct cause of these fluctuations in major offerings.
It noted that due to industrial structural shifts caused by the emergence of new technologies, these majors generally exhibit characteristics such as low employment rates in the job market and a disconnection from industrial demand.
Previously, several Chinese provinces including Shandong, Hunan, Hebei, Guangxi, Fujian, and Guizhou released "major warning lists" specifying majors with low employment rates, and business administration was included on these lists.
Other majors undergoing intensive adjustments include language and arts fields, as well as certain engineering and humanities disciplines.
The research institute analyzed that even as business administration majors are disappearing one by one, new majors are being created that precisely target specific industries such as customs inspection and international cruise management, align with digital transformation demands like business artificial intelligence and digital public governance, and directly fit major national strategies such as rural governance and accessible management for people with disabilities.
(Photo: Getty Images)
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