Tsinghua to expand undergraduate enrollment, prioritizing ‘AI+’ talent cultivation

Tsinghua University, one of China's prestigious universities, plans to increase its undergraduate enrollment quota by approximately 150 students in 2025 and will establish a new undergraduate school dedicated to cultivating interdisciplinary talents integrating artificial intelligence (AI) with multiple disciplines, thereby advancing the development of AI-related professionals, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday.

The newly founded school is expected to consolidate Tsinghua's advantageous academic resources, emphasizing the driving role of AI technologies in education, teaching and scientific innovation. Rooted in the integration of AI and other fields, it aims to pioneer AI-empowered educational paradigms to nurture versatile talents with profound AI literacy, technical mastery and exceptional innovative capabilities, Xinhua reported.

Tsinghua's initiative to expand enrollment and establish a school for cultivating "AI+" talent represents a pioneering and exploratory endeavor, which could motivate other domestic universities to increase their focus on and investment in AI, Liu Wei, director of the Human-Machine Interaction and Cognitive Engineering Laboratory at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, told the Global Times on Sunday.

If successful, this initiative may act as a model, offering valuable experiences for other universities across China, Liu added.

Tsinghua University has already achieved milestones in AI talent training and AI-enabled education. Earlier in February, it offered a course on large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, which was enjoyed by students who flocked to the first class of this new semester, according to The Paper.

A university faculty member said that the course is part of Tsinghua's AI capability enhancement program, designed to instill AI principles and methodologies in students, systematically deepen their understanding of foundational AI knowledge, and nurture more "AI+" interdisciplinary innovators, said the report.

"My research is closely associated with the application of LLMs, this course provides me with a systematic understanding of the principles of AI and the application of mainstream technology, which is conducive to scientific research to a certain extent," Zhang Yiru, a student who has taken this course, told the Global Times.

In August 2024, the Department of Higher Education under China's Ministry of Education launched the 101 Plans in the AI field, involving 15 universities, such as Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Tongji University. It also confirmed the first batch of 15 foundational AI core courses, 10 scenario-and system-application-oriented advanced courses, and two hands-on practical training courses, as reported by the CCTV News.

These involved schools are contributing to the development of "AI+" talents with various programs. Fudan University has fully initiated its AI curriculum system development, introducing 116 AI-BEST courses designed to cover multi-tiered learning content from beginners to advanced levels, according to its official website.

Meanwhile, Shanghai Jiao Tong University recently developed a multimodal AI teaching system, tailoring an AI-powered anatomy course to explore new pathways for "AI plus medical education," according to Xinhua.

Liu said national initiatives like "the 101 Plan" aim to fully leverage human resources and build a talent force aligned with current demands. "Offering AI courses in universities and developing 'AI+' talents are also a response to the needs of the times, as what we are looking for is to bring out the potential of AI now," he said.