Freshmen-to-be weigh up their major options

Experts caution about blindly choosing 'trendy' disciplines as industries fluctuate

As high school graduates begin to consider which universities and majors they should choose, experts have cautioned that they shouldn't simply go after the current trendy courses.

With students who took the national college entrance exam, or gaokao, already learning their scores, parents and students are racking their brains to plan their futures.

Zhang Xuefeng, founder of education company Fengxue Weilai, advised students to choose majors with high barriers to entry. Before that, he triggered a heated debate on microblogging platform Sina Weibo about whether journalism is a good major or not after he said he would beat his child if the child decided to study journalism at college.

Some netizens have even labeled bioengineering, chemical engineering, environment and materials majors as being poor because they said it is difficult for graduates with bachelor's degrees in these fields to find a good job.

Some also suggested students avoid liberal arts because such graduates are easily replaced in the job market.

According to the Ministry of Education, the country will adjust around 20 percent of its university majors by 2025, setting up new majors suitable for new technologies and industries, and weeding out outdated majors.

Jin Baijiang, director of the student admission office of Nankai University in Tianjin, said new majors are being created to meet new demand, and it can't easily be said if they will be good or not.

Traditional majors usually have sophisticated student cultivation plans and their graduates have stood the test of the job market, especially majors such as math, physics and chemistry, he told Guangming Daily.

Whether the new majors can become popular hinges on their ability to meet the needs of industry and the overall strength of universities that have offered the majors, he said.

However, industries fluctuate, so some new majors might also become unwanted in the future, he added.

He Zhiwei, a director of the undergraduate school of China Agricultural University, said: "Unpopular majors might not stay unpopular forever. For example, as the country puts more focus on food security, agricultural majors are becoming more popular and the threshold scores for the university's agricultural majors have increased for three consecutive years."

Jin added that whether a major is hot or not has much to do with the salary, working environment and societal demand for graduates, yet it overlooks the major's prospects and the university's strength. More importantly, students' interests and preferences are not considered, he said.

"One can easily find that there is no popular or unpopular major in the long term, and there is no popular major that is suited for all students."