The 2023 college entrance examination is approaching, and for students, "college major" has become the first crossroads of life choices.
With the economic and social development, a general trend is that the professional adjustment of universities is becoming more and more frequent, and this year, the addition, abolition and adjustment of undergraduate majors in domestic ordinary colleges and universities involve more than 2,800 professional distribution points, accounting for 4.5% of the total number of professional distribution points at present.
From these adjustments, can we read the direction of future development?
Trends in interdisciplinary convergence
The hottest event in the technology industry this year is the out-of-the-loop Chat GPT, and artificial intelligence majors have once again become hot.
However, from the perspective of the layout of new majors in colleges and universities in the past two years, the number of new schools with simple "artificial intelligence" majors has shown a downward trend, and in 2019, it "debuted at its peak", and has gradually decreased since then.
The growth trend of major categories such as "intelligent science and technology" has also slowed down, and the number of new schools in the past three years has been in single digits.
On the other hand, "artificial intelligence" is gradually becoming a tool, integrated into various fields. Interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary majors based on "artificial intelligence" have blossomed everywhere in the past two years.
According to the "Filing and Approval Results of Undergraduate Majors in Ordinary Colleges and Universities" issued by the Ministry of Education in the past three years, artificial intelligence technology is integrated with 23 disciplines, deriving emerging majors such as "intelligent water conservancy", "intelligent forestry" and "intelligent aircraft technology".
Among them, "intelligent manufacturing engineering" is the most popular, with 176 schools adding this major in the past three years.
Similar to artificial intelligence, data-related majors also show a trend of intersection and integration.
In 2017, 250 schools added a major in "Data Science and Big Data Technology". Since then, based on the development of data resources and digital technology, the "digital economy" major has broken the circle strongly, surpassing artificial intelligence in 2022 and winning the crown of new numbers.
High-tech engineering returns
In addition to the above interdisciplinary disciplines, it is worth noting that the development of high-tech industries in recent years has led to the "recovery" of engineering majors.
The most typical is the major of "Integrated Circuit Design and Integrated Systems".
As early as 2010, Shenzhen University first opened this major, but it has been tepid for a decade, with only a very small number of schools offering this major, and the number of new schools adding this major until 2019 is in the single digits.
The lack of relevant talent training also limits the growth rate of the industry to a certain extent. From the perspective of industrial development scale, although the domestic integrated circuit production has increased year by year, due to strong demand, the external dependence of integrated circuits is high, and there is still a large trade deficit.
The turning point was in 2018.
Affected by the Sino-US trade war, China has paid more attention to the development of the integrated circuit industry and introduced a number of support policies.
This is also directly reflected in the number of schools offering related majors in the past two years.
In addition, the development of new energy industry and energy storage industry has also driven the popularity of a series of new professions.
Take the energy storage industry as an example.
According to the statistics of CNESA's global energy storage project database, the domestic energy storage industry has developed rapidly in the past two years, and by the end of 2022, the cumulative installed capacity of domestic power energy storage projects has reached 59.8GW, with an annual growth rate of 38%, accounting for 25% of the total global market. And the scale will continue to grow.
Correspondingly, the major of "energy storage science and engineering" has emerged in major universities.
For example, the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology is one of the first schools to add this major in 2020, relying on the School of Energy and Power Engineering to meet the domestic demand for talents and technology in the field of energy storage.
"Slimming" that keeps pace with the times
There are many reasons for the withdrawal of majors, including insufficient student resources, low quality of education, poor quality of employment, and adjustment of school education direction.
Although the reasons are different, to a certain extent, it also reflects the general direction of social development - "more specific positioning, more focused training".
Judging from the data of the past 12 years, colleges and universities have made the most frequent adjustments to management majors.
For example, "Public Utilities Management" and "Information Management and Information Systems" are the two majors that have been withdrawn by the most schools, and they are still on the rise.
Many netizens ridiculed that in some schools, the teaching content of management majors is too vague, and the core courses lack competitiveness, resulting in the lack of clear employment direction and professional skills of the students cultivated.
From the perspective of professional rotation, the changes of "turning fiction into reality" in college management majors in recent years are also being carried out.
For example, the new "elderly care service management" in 2020, the new "entrepreneurship management" in 2021, the "charity management" and "natural resource registration and management" added in 2022 all combine management expertise with more specific industries.
Shanghai universities focus on "engineering"
In the past 12 years, the trend of major changes in Shanghai's colleges and universities has also been very obvious - constantly exploring new disciplines, establishing and highlighting the advantages and characteristics of universities themselves.
According to the fourth round of discipline evaluation by the Ministry of Education (with A+ disciplines accounting for the proportion), the advantages of Shanghai universities are concentrated in humanities and social sciences, medicine and management.
"Engineering" is the main direction of Shanghai universities.
It not only far exceeds other degrees in the total number of new majors, but also is the first in the country to set foot in new engineering fields such as artificial intelligence, data science and big data technology, which is in line with the national strategic development trend and talent demand.
When the universities in Shanghai layout disciplines, they also give play to their own characteristics, and develop in a coordinated manner.
For example, Tongji University has been expanding its engineering majors in the past 12 years, and more than 30% of the 22 new majors are engineering majors, including energy and power engineering, materials science and engineering, etc.
Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which enjoys a number of A+ disciplines in medicine, also combined artificial intelligence and medicine in 2019 and opened an intelligent medical engineering major to give full play to its own advantages.
According to the latest report released by the World Economic Forum, the Future of Work 2023, AI will be a key element affecting industries and jobs for at least the next five years. From the current data, the professional changes in domestic universities are in line with the current mainstream trend, based on the development of artificial intelligence, to achieve cross-field and interdisciplinary cross-integration, promoting the emergence of more new engineering, new medicine, new agriculture, and new liberal arts.
Source: Shangguan News