China shuts down university degrees over AI: reality or marketing?

China shuts down university degrees over AI: reality or marketing?

Is there anything more awkward than graduating from a degree programme that no longer exists? In China, three universities have decided to close several degree programmes due to the double impact of artificial intelligence and low student demand. Meanwhile, in Spain we keep inflating degrees with dubious job prospects.

Three universities, one diagnosis

The Chinese authorities don't beat around the bush: if a degree has no future and no students, they scrap it. The decision responds both to the advance of AI – which is already automating tasks that once required years of training – and to falling enrolment. It's not an isolated case: in recent years, Beijing has been adjusting its educational offering to market demands, with a pragmatism that frightens the defenders of "knowledge for knowledge's sake".

AI: hype or real revolution?

A reasonable doubt echoes through the debate: are we facing a genuine technological revolution or another marketing bubble? Some argue that today's AI is "pure hype", incapable of matching real human intelligence. But at the same time, the facts speak for themselves: machines already outperform people in technical, numerical and scientific tasks. As one analyst puts it, "for 90% of things, humans are way behind a well-programmed machine". The degrees that survived thanks to the "human factor" – the ones selling empathy and warm smiles – are the ones AI will take longest to render useless. Or maybe not that long.

The Spanish irony

While China shuts down what doesn't work, in Spain dozens of degree programmes with rock-bottom employment rates remain alive. The difference is textbook: they act, we debate. And in the end, those who can, can; those who can't, join the unemployment queue. The question, of course, is whether AI will also make many Spanish degrees unviable. But that would require a difficult decision. Far too difficult.