China to Expand Undergraduate Enrollment at Double First-Class Universities by Over 76,000 from 2027 to 2030, Prioritizing AI and Other Fields

On September 23, the State Council Information Office held a press conference on implementing the 15th Five-Year Plan and accelerating the building of an education powerhouse. Guo Peng, director of the Ministry of Education's Department of Development Planning, said Double First-Class universities expanded undergraduate enrollment by a cumulative 38,000 in 2024 and 2025, with an additional 24,000 this year, bringing the three-year total to 62,000 additional undergraduate enrollment slots. The 15th Five-Year Plan outline calls for increasing undergraduate enrollment at these universities by more than 100,000, meaning another 76,000-plus expansion from 2027 to 2030. Guo said the expansion advances structural optimization and quality improvement in parallel, with priority support for artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, biomedicine, new energy and other frontier and emerging interdisciplinary fields.

The undergraduate enrollment expansion directly changes the scale of talent supply and university program layout in frontier fields such as artificial intelligence, altering the capacity of the AI talent pipeline. For universities, added enrollment slots require matching faculty, curricula and laboratory resources, so whether expansion and quality improvement advance together will shape training quality. For AI education product providers, artificial intelligence being named a priority field expands the demand base for related courses, experiment platforms and teaching tools. The press conference did not release discipline-level or university-level expansion quotas, nor specific enrollment growth figures for AI programs, so actual implementation still needs verification through subsequent enrollment plans and program filing records. Artificial intelligence is named a priority field for discipline and program optimization, potentially increasing enrollment and curriculum resources for related programs. Investment in new campuses and laboratories at Double First-Class universities expands, changing the supply of teaching and laboratory infrastructure.