China¡¯s sweeping reforms that aim to accelerate the launch of new university programmes will?push higher education into aligning more closely with national strategic priorities, scholars have said.

Late last month, the Central Education Work Leading Group approved a plan that will introduce a ¡°fast-track¡± mechanism enabling universities to create and enrol students in new majors within the same year, bypassing traditional multi-year approval cycles.

Some 29 undergraduate majors have already been added under the scheme, including in areas such as low-altitude technology and engineering, international cruise management, health and medical insurance and intelligent audio-visual engineering.

These are eligible for immediate rollout by universities that apply to introduce them.

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The reforms are backed by the Talent Weather Forecast platform, a big-data system intended to replace experience-driven planning with real-time labour market modelling.

Futao?Huang, a Chinese-born scholar at Hiroshima University¡¯s Research Institute for Higher Education, said the fast-track mechanism could reshape how universities respond to demand.

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¡°It will likely make Chinese universities much more agile in responding to shifting labour market and policy priorities. In the past, lengthy approval processes often meant that by the time new majors were launched, the demand had already evolved.

¡°The ability to open new programmes within the same year should reduce this lag and enable institutions to align more closely with emerging industries, particularly in areas like AI, green technologies and interdisciplinary fields.¡±

Huang added that the newly added majors, particularly those linked to artificial intelligence and new energy fields, ¡°reflect China¡¯s strategic priorities in both technological self-reliance and industrial upgrading¡±.

He said the Talent Weather Forecast could prove powerful if universities retain real autonomy in how they interpret its forecasts but warned that the quality of the data will be critical.

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International collaboration, he suggested, may become more tightly linked to domestic objectives:?¡°On the one hand, the push toward new, globally relevant majors might encourage Chinese universities to seek partnerships in frontier fields where the UK and other countries have strong expertise.

¡°On the other, the emphasis on rapid alignment with domestic strategic priorities might limit space for collaborations that do not directly serve national objectives. This tension will be important to watch.¡±

The plan also emphasises ¡°empowerment of AI to education and teaching¡±, calls for new interdisciplinary centres, and urges universities to deepen reforms of talent cultivation.

Ka?Ho?Mok, provost of the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, told ̽»¨ÊÓƵ that the Talent Weather Forecast system could help ¡°support the design and approval of innovative curriculum with interdisciplinary orientation and international relevance¡±.

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He was more positive about the potential for the reforms to create space for international collaboration.

¡°The proposed reform measures for curriculum innovation will provide great opportunities for overseas universities to develop meaningful partnership with Chinese universities,¡± Mok, also deputy director of the Centre for Global Higher Education at the University of Oxford, said.

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¡°Moving beyond ideological conflicts with serious efforts promoting Sino-British universities¡¯ collaborations will definitely benefit both sides.¡±

tash.mosheim@timeshighereducation.com