China urges universities to differentiate in top-down reforms

The Chinese government has urged the country’s universities to adapt to demographic decline and to better differentiate themselves from one another in a package of sweeping education reforms. But experts have cautioned that universities alone cannot solve China’s economic challenges.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council of the People’s Republic of China have published new guidelines for higher education stating that universities must respond to trends in the “school-age population”, as well as develop more clear and specialised roles. 

According to the new guidelines, research-intensive universities in China must also orientate themselves towards “national strategic needs” and align their academic teaching with emerging industries such as artificial intelligence, integrated circuits and biomedicine.

Demographic decline has been identified as one of the main drivers behind the continued push from the Chinese government to strengthen its higher education sector and expand university enrolment.

Julian Fisher, co-founder of Venture Education, told Times Higher Education that China possesses a “short window to reshape the higher education system and utilise what will otherwise become excess capacity”.

Last week, vice-minister of education Wang Guangyan told a press conference that China now has 270 million people educated to a tertiary level, and Chinese local press put the number of Chinese students enrolled in university in 2025 at nearly 49 million.

As a plummeting fertility rate and shrinking workforce continue to place economic pressure on China, a higher proportion of young people could be steered towards a university degree, observers suggest

However, Sabrina Wang, founder of Aslan Education Planning (AEP), a Shenzhen-based education consultancy, said that the problems pertaining to China’s higher education system go beyond falling student numbers.

“Public scepticism over university value, intense pressure to secure equitable access for every child, labour-market misalignment, outdated curricula, underqualified faculty – including those who purchased degrees or publications – and entrenched bureaucratic control all signal that comprehensive education reform is long overdue,” Wang argued.

She said that “real progress” requires confronting those issues “head-on”.

“Beyond 2030, university education may become near-universal in access, but functional, quality and labour-market disparities across institutions will likely widen.”

Fisher shared Wang’s view that employment outcomes will remain the fundamental challenge for Chinese universities despite the new reforms.

The country has already introduced substantial measures to combat unemployment. For example, all universities must provide one career adviser per 500 final-year graduates.

“A decade ago, student employability was very much an afterthought in many Chinese universities, but the shift in focus to today has been at China speed,” said Fisher – meaning very fast.

“Graduate employability now has to be a whole-institution responsibility, and senior university leaders have to take the lead in local employer outreach, leaning into China’s hierarchal and relationship-based society,” he added.

Futao Huang, professor at Hiroshima University’s Research Institute for Higher Education, said China’s attempts to align universities with industry “could help” but maintained that “universities alone cannot solve a shortage of suitable jobs”.

“The key question is whether these reforms can improve graduates’ prospects while helping universities adapt to a shrinking student population,” he said.

Unemployment is a challenge shared by economies around the world. But Fisher suggested that China’s ability to move fast might wield “real substantial change”.

“And that’s something that global universities, with an aversion to risk-taking and dynamism, might struggle to compete with come 2041.”

rosalind.skillen@timeshighereducation.com