Colleges open AI classes to meet market demand

Chinese universities are accelerating efforts to integrate education with artificial intelligence, with more AI colleges opening to cultivate interdisciplinary talent and more general AI courses and textbooks introduced.

Tsinghua University, one of China's top schools, recently announced it will increase its undergraduate admissions by about 150 students this year and establish a new undergraduate college for general AI education. The students will enroll in the new program, which aims to integrate AI across multiple disciplines.

The initiative pools academic resources from various fields, seeking to develop students with a solid foundation in AI, high proficiency in AI technologies and strong innovative capabilities, the university said. The move is part of Tsinghua's efforts to advance AI-related professional training and support China's push for high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and self-strengthening, according to Xinhua News Agency.

As AI rapidly evolves, reshaping education and driving socioeconomic development, the need for individuals with comprehensive AI knowledge and skills is becoming increasingly urgent.

Wang Xuenan, deputy director at the Digital Education Research Institute of the China National Academy of Educational Sciences, told China Central Television the number of students majoring in AI was estimated at more than 40,000 last year, yet "the number still falls far short of the needs of the industry."

Market consultancy McKinsey& Company estimates that China will need 6 million professionals with proficient AI knowledge by 2030.

In November 2023, a talent training initiative on collaborative research in general AI was jointly launched by the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence, Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and 13 other leading universities. Zhu Songchun, director of the Beijing institute and dean of the School of Intelligent Science and Technology at Peking University, told Guangming Daily that the plan will leverage the resources of these universities to create a training system that seamlessly connects undergraduate and doctoral education.

In September last year, Nankai University and Tianjin University introduced a general AI course through a massive open online course, or MOOC, targeting more than 100,000 undergraduates in Tianjin. The course covers AI's basic principles and history while exploring cutting-edge generative AI models and their applications in healthcare, intelligent manufacturing and autonomous driving, according to Xu Zhen, director of the department of higher education at the Tianjin Municipal Education Commission.

Zhejiang University announced in March that it will lead an upgrade of the "AI plus X" micro program in collaboration with Fudan University, Nanjing University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the University of Science and Technology of China. The country's first micro program integrating AI with other disciplines, it aims to bridge technology with fields such as humanities, social sciences, agriculture, medicine and engineering.

xunuo@chinadaily.com.cn