A list of undergraduate majors that failed to fill their enrollment quotas for the 2026 academic year has reignited debate about which fields of study are "hot" and "cold" among Chinese students. As university admissions draw to a close, the data reveals a significant mismatch between the talent universities are producing and the actual needs of the job market.
The analysis, conducted by the MyCOS Institute for Higher Education Management Data Research, looked at first-round supplementary admission data from ten provinces, including Anhui, Guangxi, and Jiangsu. This process, known as "voluntary collection," occurs when a major's initial enrollment spots are not filled. The more rounds of supplementary admissions a major requires, the less popular it is with students.
According to the findings, 会计学 (Accounting) topped the list of most-rejected majors with 410 instances of unfilled spots, followed closely by 财务管理 (Financial Management) with 398, 英语 (English) with 379, and 计算机科学与技术 (Computer Science and Technology) with 372. Traditional liberal arts majors dominated the rankings, but some science and engineering fields also appeared.
Surprisingly, even highly-touted majors like 人工智能 (Artificial Intelligence) made the list. Despite ranking second on Baidu's 2026 list of hottest majors for college entrance exams, AI programs recorded 207 unfilled spots in the science and engineering category, ranking fourth. This creates a stark contrast between high public interest and the reality of incomplete enrollment.
Why are popular majors also failing to fill their quotas?
Ding Changfa, an associate professor of economics at Xiamen University, explained that the oversupply of engineering graduates is relative, not absolute. The country is still facing a critical shortage of high-quality, new-economy engineering talent. He argued that the "rejected list" reflects a structural mismatch between university training and industrial demand, not the overall decline of any single field.
Jiang Quanbao, a professor at the Capital University of Economics and Business, noted that the list signals a shift in student choice from blindly chasing trends to a more rational assessment of employment prospects. The labor market is effectively re-pricing different skills and academic backgrounds.
The full list of rejected majors
The top ten majors with the most unfilled spots were: 会计学 (Accounting, 410), 财务管理 (Financial Management, 398), 英语 (English, 379), 计算机科学与技术 (Computer Science and Technology, 372), 汉语言文学 (Chinese Language and Literature, 261), 网络与新媒体 (Online and New Media, 257), 数据科学与大数据技术 (Data Science and Big Data Technology, 252), 国际经济与贸易 (International Economics and Trade, 237), 土木工程 (Civil Engineering, 232), and 电子商务 (E-commerce, 229).
This list is not entirely aligned with public perception of "cold majors." It includes both traditional liberal arts fields and engineering disciplines that were once widely favored. However, a common thread is the enormous number of institutions offering these programs, leading to a massive and growing supply of graduates. For instance, data from the Ministry of Education shows that 690 undergraduate institutions offer 会计学 (Accounting), and 733 offer 财务管理 (Financial Management), each graduating over 100,000 students annually. The situation is even more acute for 英语 (English), which is offered by 984 out of 1,308 undergraduate universities in China, more than any other major.
Ding Changfa pointed out that many universities, particularly private ones, have rapidly expanded their offerings in finance, accounting, and foreign languages. These programs require lower operational costs and fewer facilities than engineering, allowing for quick expansion. However, fields like foreign languages are being directly impacted by the rise of artificial intelligence, which is automating many translation and clerical tasks.
The inclusion of 土木工程 (Civil Engineering) reflects the slowdown in traditional infrastructure construction. The MyCOS report shows a continuous decline in employment satisfaction for civil engineering graduates as the real estate sector shrinks. Business majors like 国际经济与贸易 (International Economics and Trade) and 电子商务 (E-commerce) face similar challenges of large graduate pools, low professional barriers, and unclear career paths.
Universities are already responding. A separate MyCOS study found that among 70 universities that announced the suspension of certain majors in 2025, the most common were 市场营销 (Marketing), 公共事业管理 (Public Administration), 物流管理 (Logistics Management), 财务管理 (Financial Management), and 电子商务 (E-commerce), all of which overlap significantly with the "rejected list."
Why are hot majors like AI failing to fill their quotas?
The fact that 人工智能 (Artificial Intelligence) ranked fourth in the science and engineering list of unfilled spots has surprised many observers. A key factor is that the vast majority of these unfilled AI spots are at private universities. Meanwhile, at elite "Double First-Class" universities, AI programs are becoming even more competitive. For example, the minimum admission rank for the AI program at Beijing University of Technology improved by 1,510 places compared to 2025, and the AI program at Tongji University had the second-highest minimum admission score in the province of Zhejiang.
This divergence is not an isolated case. 计算机科学与技术 (Computer Science and Technology) ranked fourth overall on the list, but it remains a top choice for students at elite universities. The MyCOS report clearly states that popular majors are not cooling down overall; rather, the differentiation between universities is becoming more pronounced.
Ding Changfa believes that many liberal arts and finance-focused universities, in an attempt to catch a trend, launched AI programs without the necessary faculty or academic foundation, leading to uneven training quality. He warned against a repeat of past cycles, such as the proliferation of foreign language programs after the reform and opening-up or the surge in international trade majors in the 1990s. Universities should base their offerings on their comparative advantages, including faculty strength and academic history.
Jiang Quanbao cautioned that industrial demand for AI talent does not mean every university needs to offer the program. When institutions with insufficient capacity force a new major, the result can be "a new name, but an old training model, poor quality, and terrible job prospects." The root of the "hot and cold" phenomenon for the same major lies in the mismatch between training quality and employment outcomes. The MyCOS report shows that the job-matching rate for AI graduates is only 55%, far below the national undergraduate average of 73%. Among those not working in a related field, 32% said they could not meet the professional requirements.
This structural contradiction is exacerbated by the rapid proliferation of AI programs. By 2026, over 600 undergraduate institutions nationwide offer AI, a massive increase from the initial 35 in 2018, far outpacing the actual growth in industrial demand for talent. Jiang Quanbao analyzed that the simple logic of "a popular major equals a good job" is changing. Companies now need specific, problem-solving talent, not just a generic "computer science" or "AI" graduate. The "rejected list" reflects a re-evaluation of employment risk: students are now asking not just "Is this major popular?" but also "Can I find a good job in four years, and what specific skills will I need?"
The MyCOS report concludes that competition in undergraduate education is shifting from "whether a university has a major" to "how good the quality of that major is." Jiang Quanbao believes that the real competition between universities in the future will increasingly focus on their capacity to build strong, effective programs. A university's competitiveness will be judged by its ability to align its strengths with industry needs, its faculty quality, and its graduates' market recognition.
How to achieve a dynamic balance in major adjustments?
On the other side of the "rejected list" is a major overhaul of the university discipline system. In April 2026, the Ministry of Education released a new undergraduate major catalog, adding 38 new majors for a total of 883. The direction of the new additions is clear: fields like embodied intelligence and brain-computer science directly serve future industries, while semiconductor technology supports the drive for chip self-sufficiency. Of the 38 new majors, 13 include the words "digital," "intelligent," or "smart" in their names. The catalog also introduced a new "Interdisciplinary" category for the first time.
Policy efforts go beyond just updating the catalog. The Ministry of Education has established a special mechanism for setting up majors that are urgently needed for national strategy. For example, in 2025, six universities, including Beihang University, added a major in low-altitude technology and engineering, bypassing normal procedures. While this shift in logic is necessary, implementing it is difficult. Ding Changfa pointed out that universities face deep-seated resistance, including path dependency on their existing structures and the challenge of retraining a large faculty with little flexibility in personnel adjustment.
Universities in central and western China face even more specific difficulties. Funding is the primary bottleneck. Attracting and retaining quality faculty in expensive fields like AI is difficult when local economies lack the resources of the more developed eastern regions. The "brain drain" to the east is a persistent problem.
To address this, the Ministry of Education has implemented a system for annual updates of the major catalog and a provincial-level system for publishing lists of priority and cautionary majors. Jiang Quanbao suggested that universities should establish a closed-loop system of "monitoring and warning" and "dynamic adjustment," tracking metrics like enrollment, employment quality, and industrial relevance. He cautioned against using a single national standard, like a "stop enrollment if the employment rate falls below X%." Instead, a warning should be triggered when multiple indicators simultaneously deteriorate, such as a sustained increase in enrollment without a corresponding improvement in graduate employment quality, job matching, and career development prospects.
Adjustments must also guard against short-termism. Tian Xianpeng, an associate professor at Jiangnan University, warned that over-reliance on quantitative metrics could encourage short-term, utilitarian thinking, ignoring the long-term value of talent cultivation and potentially harming basic sciences and humanities. An editorial in the People's Daily on August 9, 2026, argued that choosing a major should not be solely driven by market trends and that adjustments must balance market orientation with long-term value. The editorial also emphasized the importance of maintaining strong foundational disciplines like mathematics, physics, and chemistry, and noted that the humanities cultivate critical thinking, aesthetic judgment, and ethical reasoning, which are essential for the AI era.
The shifting landscape of "hot" and "cold" majors in 2026 reflects not just individual student choices, but the broader evolution of higher education in response to industrial restructuring. When 600 universities can all offer the same major in 人工智能 (Artificial Intelligence), what distinguishes them is no longer the name of the program, but the quality of its faculty, its curriculum, its integration with industry, and the real-world competitiveness of its graduates. This is the core direction of the ongoing structural adjustment of undergraduate majors.
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