Communication University of China Adjusts 16 Majors for AI

Dek: Communication University of China said the adjustment of 16 undergraduate majors and tracks was not a simple cancellation drive, but part of a longer AI-era overhaul that is merging some legacy skill programs into broader creative pathways while expanding AI-oriented fields.

When a university known for training journalists, filmmakers, broadcasters, and creative professionals says it has adjusted 16 undergraduate majors and tracks, the easiest headline is that it is cutting old programs. The more important story is narrower and more structural: one of China’s best-known media schools is publicly saying AI is changing how creative talent should be trained in the first place.

On March 9, Communication University of China responded on its official website to the online debate around comments by party secretary Liao Xiangzhong. According to the university’s account, the move should not be read as a simple wave of cancellations. Instead, Liao said the school is carrying out dynamic program reform for the AI era, including closing, merging, repurposing, upgrading, prioritizing, and redesigning different parts of its undergraduate structure.

That distinction matters. If the story were only that a university cut 16 programs, it would be another anxiety headline about AI replacing people. What makes this worth international attention is that the school is describing a broader shift in media education, creative labor, and human-machine collaboration.

What the university actually said

The safest formulation is the one the university itself used: it said it adjusted 16 undergraduate majors and tracks, and that not all were simply cancelled.

In the official March 9 explanation, Liao said some specialized technical-training programs no longer make sense as fully standalone majors in the AI era. Others are being upgraded. Others are being prioritized. Still others are being newly designed. He linked the changes to a long-running reform framework the university has used since 2018, rather than to a one-off reaction to this year’s AI buzz.

That is an important editorial boundary. The current public record does not support writing this as if the university abruptly panicked and wiped out 16 majors overnight. It supports something more nuanced: the school says it has been running a rolling reform process for years, and the latest round was simply more visible because the scale of adjustment was bigger.

The university also framed the reform as part of a larger answer to how higher education should react when AI tools begin to absorb more routine technical work. In other words, the question is no longer only whether students should learn to use AI. It is whether entire degree structures built around narrower legacy workflows still make sense.

The photography example shows the real logic

The clearest example in the source chain is photography.

Liao said the photography major was not abolished, but merged into Film and Television Photography and Production. The reasoning, as relayed on the university website, was that standalone photography training no longer carries enough weight to support a complete major by itself. A modern curriculum now has to combine technical imaging, post-production, and broader cross-media creative skills.

That is the part of the story that travels well outside China. AI is not only changing what tools creators use. It is starting to change how schools define the boundary between one creative discipline and another.

For decades, many media programs were organized around specific production crafts: photography, translation, broadcasting, editing, or other narrower skills. What Communication University of China is now saying is that some of those boundaries may be too rigid for a workflow in which image generation, automated editing, translation assistance, multimodal production, and platform-native storytelling increasingly overlap.

That does not mean the craft disappears. It means the school believes the craft should sit inside a broader production system. The same broader shift in how AI is changing creative and design workflows also shows up in Pointer-CAD Shows China’s AI Race Moving Into 3D Design, where the technology story is less about one tool and more about how professional production boundaries are being redrawn.

This is a multi-year restructuring story, not a one-semester reaction

Another reason this story matters is the time frame.

According to the university website, Communication University of China has been running this reform direction since 2018 under what it described as a four-part framework: some programs are closed, merged, or repurposed; some are upgraded; some are built up as priorities; and some are newly planned and designed. Liao said the school now makes dynamic adjustments every year, rather than waiting for a much slower cycle.

He also said that over the past seven or eight years, nearly the entire disciplinary and major structure of the university has been adjusted at least once. That claim should be read as the university’s own characterization, not as an independently audited external assessment. But even taken on those terms, it signals a much deeper institutional response than a headline about one hot-search topic would suggest.

The school added another data point that reinforces the same message. According to the university website, it added 20 majors between 2018 and 2025. The examples given included Intelligent Science and Technology, and 2025 additions translated from the Chinese source as Intelligent Imaging Technology, Game Art Design, and Intelligent Audiovisual Engineering.

That is why the most accurate reading is not that old majors are simply being removed. It is that the university is shrinking some single-skill tracks while simultaneously building new AI-facing and cross-disciplinary ones.

Why this matters beyond one campus

For global readers, the strongest angle is not Chinese campus politics. It is the idea that AI is beginning to push upstream into curriculum design.

A large share of recent AI-in-education coverage around the world has focused on plagiarism rules, chatbot bans, homework policies, or short-term classroom usage. This case is more structural. It is about whether a university should still organize creative training around legacy job descriptions when production pipelines are being rearranged by automation, multimodal tools, and platform-native content formats.

That is especially notable at Communication University of China because the school sits close to journalism, film, television, digital content, and cultural production. If a university of that type starts publicly arguing that majors need to be merged, reweighted, or rebuilt for the AI era, the implication is larger than one campus administration decision. It suggests the pressure from AI is moving into the way institutions define creative employability itself.

That does not mean China has already solved how to train creators for an AI-heavy economy. It does not mean every Chinese university is making the same changes. And it certainly does not mean creative labor has become obsolete. The more defensible conclusion is that at least one influential school is now treating AI as a force strong enough to justify degree-level redesign, not just course-level experimentation. That labor-and-training angle also connects with China Says It Is Studying How AI Can Create Jobs and Upgrade Traditional Work, where the policy question is likewise shifting from isolated tools to the redesign of jobs and systems.

The university’s argument is not “humanities are dead”

One of the more interesting details in the official response is that Liao argued the opposite of a crude “AI kills the humanities” line.

According to the university website, he said the humanities and social sciences will remain highly important, perhaps even more important in the future, but they need to go through innovation, self-reform, and much tighter integration with natural sciences and new technical methods.

That is a useful correction to the most sensational reading of the story. The school is not saying humanistic or creative education no longer matters. It is saying that those fields may need to be rebuilt around new production realities, interdisciplinary methods, and closer contact with technical systems.

That framing also helps explain why this story fits the 1M Reviews lens. The main signal is not a culture-war argument about whether AI is good or bad for universities. The signal is that AI is forcing institutions to redraw the line between technical execution, creative judgment, and domain knowledge.

In that sense, the story sits closer to labor-market restructuring than to campus controversy. It overlaps with a broader China trend in which AI is being discussed not only as software or hardware, but as something that changes how factories, public services, and now educational pipelines are organized. A similar system-redesign theme appears in China’s AI+Manufacturing Push Targets 1,000 Industrial Agents by 2027, where institutions are reworking operating models around AI rather than merely adding another digital tool.

What not to overstate

This is exactly the kind of story that becomes weaker if it is exaggerated.

The current source set supports saying that Communication University of China said it adjusted 16 undergraduate majors and tracks, that it described the process as broader AI-era restructuring rather than simple cancellation, that photography was merged into Film and Television Photography and Production, and that the reform direction dates back to 2018.

The current public evidence does not support publishing a full list of all 16 adjusted majors and tracks, because that list has not been fully disclosed in the materials used here. It also does not support writing as if AI alone explains every part of the university’s reform logic, or as if all Chinese universities are now copying the same blueprint.

Lianhe Zaobao’s March 9 coverage adds a useful secondary frame, reporting that Liao cast the future as a period of human-machine division of labor and described the school as pushing a kind of classroom revolution. That helps clarify the philosophy behind the reform. But it still should not be stretched into a claim that China has reached a settled national model for AI-era creative education.

Bottom line

Communication University of China’s March 9 clarification matters because it turns an overheated “major cuts” headline into a more meaningful AI story.

The university says it adjusted 16 undergraduate majors and tracks, not that it simply erased them. It says the shift is part of a reform cycle that has been running since 2018. It uses the merger of photography into a broader film-and-television production major to show how narrower skill tracks may be giving way to wider, cross-media pathways. And it points to newer additions such as Intelligent Science and Technology, Intelligent Imaging Technology, Game Art Design, and Intelligent Audiovisual Engineering as examples of where the structure is moving.

The broader takeaway is straightforward: China is no longer discussing AI only as a tool that students might use. At least in some institutions, it is becoming a force that reshapes how universities think creative talent should be trained in the first place.