China's Ministry of Education has introduced 38 new majors to advanced education institutions in response to the evolving needs of national strategies and the pursuit of high-quality development.
The ministry on Tuesday announced updates to the catalog of undergraduate majors in general colleges and universities, adding majors such as rare earth science and engineering, and deep earth science and engineering.
To support the optimization and upgrading of traditional industries, new majors such as traffic-energy integration engineering and agricultural robotics have been included. To promote the innovation and development of emerging industries and future industries, majors such as biomanufacturing, embodied intelligence, and brain-computer science and technology have been introduced. To focus on creating new forms of an intelligent economy, majors such as digital trade and digital finance have been added. To enhance the capacity and quality of the service sector, majors such as digital culture and tourism and business artificial intelligence have been launched.
"The new major is named 'Rare Earth Science and Engineering,' and it is also the first rare earth major based on the entire industrial chain in the world. Through systematic and professional undergraduate education, we hope to cultivate interdisciplinary and comprehensive outstanding technical talents," said Li Chaozhong, dean of the College of Rare Earths at Jiangxi University of Science and Technology.
Beijing International Studies University (BISU) has launched a new major that combines culture and tourism with digital intelligence.
"The digital culture and tourism responds to the trend of digital and intelligent transformation in the culture and tourism industry. It addresses the industry's demands in areas such as AI-driven transformation, cultural and tourism product design, and online platform operations. The program aims to cultivate versatile professionals equipped with the mindset of 'creativity plus scene' and 'AI plus culture and tourism,'" said Lyu Ning, dean of the School of Tourism Sciences of BISU.
To date, the catalog of undergraduate majors in general colleges and universities includes 883 majors in 13 fields of study.
China adds 38 new majors to higher education catalog
