Humanities studies take back seat as AI surges ahead

Global trend

Humanities subjects are facing similar academic decline around the world.

OECD data shows enrollment in the humanities has witnessed a significant decrease in 80 percent of its member nations over the past decade.

At the US Ivy League college Harvard, its arts/humanities cohort shrank from 15.5 percent to 12.5 percent over the past decade while Britain's University of Kent announced last March that it would phase out six programs, including philosophy and art history.

On the career front, China's humanities graduates are confronting stark realities.

STEM graduates command significantly higher starting salaries, according to a report by Beijing-based education consultancy MyCOS. For 2022 college graduates, software engineers could earn a 7,056 yuan ($976) monthly salary compared with 5,374 yuan for visual design, the report said. Among China's 10 highest-earning degrees in 2022 there were no humanities majors.

Experts predict as China upgrades its manufacturing sector toward smart production, demand will surge further for talent in the fields of semiconductors, new energy, and biomedicine.

Meanwhile, AI advances through ChatGPT and DeepSeek threaten to automate entry-level humanities work involving language processing and data synthesis, they said.

Zhou Yisu, an associate professor of the faculty of education at the University of Macau, said he supports less well-known universities cutting liberal arts enrollments.

In past university enrollment expansions, less reputable universities had admitted many humanities students, but one must seriously reflect on what value they had created for the students and society as a whole, he told the Paper.cn.

The issue is a global one and is not unique to China, he added.