Summary:

The Ministry of Education has released the result of its annual approval of new bachelor’s degree programmes in 2016. Newly approved programmes will be able to recruit students starting from the 2017-18 academic year.

This year, a total of 2178 new bachelor’s degree programmes have been approved across 828 universities. The most popular new subjects is E-Commerce, added at 53 universities. Other popular subjects include Mechanical Engineering, Internet of Things Engineering and Software Engineering. Overall the largest group of newly added subjects were in the Engineering field, with 786 newly approved programmes, followed by Management and Arts fields with 314 and 297 new programmes respectively.

Meanwhile, 458 bachelor’s degree programmes were cancelled, with the most commonly cancelled programmes being Economics, Education and Law respectively. According to the relevant regulations of the MoE, if there is no student enrolment in certain subjects for five consecutive years, the University shall repeal the discipline in due process.

A list of the top newly approved programmes is given below:

E-Commerce: Added by 53 universities
Mechanical Engineering: Added by 40 universities
Internet of Things Engineering: Added by 37 universities
Software Engineering: Added by 37 universities
Financial Engineering: Added by 36 universities
Networks and Media: Added by 36 universities
Data Science and Big Data Technology: Added by 32 universities
Auditing: Added by 32 universities
Business English: Added by 30 universities
Digital Media Arts: Added by 28 universities
Pre-School Education: Added by 28 universities

Analysis by Kevin Prest

The list of popular newly approved programmes above can give a useful indicator of the fastest-rising subject areas in Chinese universities. The popularity of these fields may mean that these areas have more potential for student recruitment or for UK-China joint educational cooperation.

Sources:

1. http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A08/moe_1034/s4930/201703/t20170317_299960.html (full list of added, altered and removed programmes)

2. http://gaokao.chsi.com.cn/gkxx/zybk/zyybk/201703/20170322/1592732071.html

3. http://learning.sohu.com/20170320/n483989235.shtml

4. http://zhuanye.eol.cn/biangeng/201703/t20170321_1499670.shtml