AI Reshapes China’s University Degrees and Creative Jobs

Chinese universities are cutting, merging or restructuring creative and language programmes as artificial intelligence changes employment needs, TechRadar reports.

The Central Academy of Fine Arts has dropped courses in illustration, photography and translation, arguing that AI has made them poor value for money. Fashion design degrees are also being scrapped at some universities, which say creative work will increasingly depend on cooperation between people and machines.

The changes follow a state campaign directing learners toward chips, robotics and AI. From 2021 to 2025, Chinese universities closed or paused 12,200 undergraduate programmes and launched roughly 10,200 new ones. The restructuring affected over 30% of undergraduate programmes nationwide, with arts, humanities and language courses absorbing the heaviest cuts.

A survey of 70 universities found cuts to five translation majors, eight Japanese majors and five German majors. Alex Shi, who studied English translation and interpreting, said the changes overlook skills such as communication and critical thinking. She said AI may bring translation accuracy almost to perfection, but interpreting requires more than converting words between languages. “There’s still that personal style that’s always been essential in translation,” Shi said.

The Communication University of China reportedly closed five programmes, including visual communication design, comics and photography. Its top official, Liao Xiangzhong, later clarified that the majors were merged into other disciplines rather than cancelled outright.

New film and animation roles, including prompt engineer and AI animator, are emerging. One industry worker said work that once took one month can now produce a complete project with AI.