In today's era, the most popular major is ____.

According to the "Little Blue Whale of Nanyang University Enrollment", the average annual salary of the first undergraduate graduates of artificial intelligence at Nanjing University is 303,800 yuan, and the average annual salary of master graduates is 482,100 yuan, which has won good results in employment!

The 2022 graduation ceremony of the School of Artificial Intelligence of Nanjing University

Artificial Intelligence, like a beam of light, has attracted students who are eager to act as the helmsman of the spacecraft in this sea of stars, and has also given birth to many universities to make plans and focus on intelligent disciplines.

In the document "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan" in 2017, the State Council clearly elevated artificial intelligence to a major national development strategy, and proposed to "improve the artificial intelligence education system", build artificial intelligence disciplines, establish artificial intelligence majors, and promote the construction of first-level disciplines in the field of artificial intelligence. In 2018, the Ministry of Education once again emphasized this important task in the "Action Plan for Artificial Intelligence Innovation in Higher Education Institutions". Artificial intelligence has set off an unstoppable prairie fire in the field of higher education.

The gap is 5 million, and the high salary after graduation

Humans are entering the era of intelligent society. In recent years, artificial intelligence majors have continued to be popular, and artificial intelligence majors seem to have become synonymous with "high salary" and "good employment".

Wu Fei, a professor at the School of Computer Science and Technology of Zhejiang University, noticed that in recent years, the artificial intelligence majors in many top universities have received more than traditional computer majors in Zhejiang Province. More students with strong academic skills flock to the artificial intelligence major, and their scores have also risen.

Behind the study craze is the huge market demand for artificial intelligence driven by national strategy. According to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security's "New Occupation - Analysis of Employment Status of Artificial Intelligence Engineering and Technical Personnel Employment Prosperity", my country's current gap of artificial intelligence talents exceeds 5 million, and the domestic supply and demand ratio is 1:10, and the supply and demand ratio is seriously unbalanced. Filling in the talent gap is our top priority.

The report also pointed out that the high salary of the artificial intelligence industry is mainly distributed in Beijing-Tianjin, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta and some inland provincial capitals. Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hangzhou rank first, with monthly salary of about 18,000; Suzhou, Nanjing, Guangzhou and Xiamen rank second, with monthly salary of about 14,000; other coastal and inland provincial capital cities, such as Chengdu, Chongqing, Changsha and Jinan, are in third, with monthly salary of about 13,000.

Now, the whole country is snatching up artificial intelligence professionals and extending high-paying "olive branches". Previously, the news of "Lei Jun poaching a post-95 genius AI girl with tens of millions of annual salary" has become a hot search, and the protagonist Luo Fuli is one of the key collaborators of DeepSeek-V2.

10 universities, ranked A+!

In 2018, the artificial intelligence major was approved for the first time. By 2024, in just 7 years, 621 universities have registered and approved the artificial intelligence major.

Relying on its discipline advantages, many universities’ artificial intelligence majors are like shining pearls, shining brightly in the education industry. According to the 2024 China University Major Ranking of Soft Science, 53 universities have artificial intelligence majors listed on the A-level. Among them, 10 universities including Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Nanjing University, Xi'an University of Electronic Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, University of Science and Technology of China, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Southeast University, and Harbin Institute of Technology ranked A+.

Tsinghua University has never missed the "first move" in artificial intelligence. From the establishment of China's earliest "Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Control" teaching and research team, to the development of the world's first new memristor storage and computing integrated chip, to the birth of the 100 billion parameter dialogue model ChatGLM... In Tsinghua Park, it has witnessed the rapid progress of artificial intelligence.

In 1978, Tsinghua recruited the first master's degree in the field of artificial intelligence; in 2022, the computer science experimental class, artificial intelligence class, and quantum information class were merged into "Yao Class". Today, Tsinghua has cultivated countless top innovative talents in the field of computer and artificial intelligence that leads the world. The most representative ones are the "Tsinghua Representative Team" trained by Zhang Bian, the leading expert in artificial intelligence: Huang Biqing, who focuses on artificial intelligence researching "solving industrial practical problems" in the field of industrial application, and Zhu Jun, a top scholar in machine learning and Bayesian methods around the world. Tsinghua University has always been committed to building the best talent ecosystem and paving the way to independently cultivate high-level artificial intelligence talents.

As the "Whampoa Military Academy of IT", Xi'an University of Electronic Science and Technology has been deeply engaged in the field of artificial intelligence for more than 30 years, and has successively cultivated more than 100 leading figures in the academic and industrial sectors, and has built a distinctive education system of "cross-border integration of artificial intelligence + other disciplines".

The school began to train graduate students in the field of artificial intelligence in 1990, train undergraduate students in the field of artificial intelligence in 2005, and established the first artificial intelligence college directly under the Ministry of Education in 2017, and established and recruited Turing artificial intelligence science experimental class in the fall of 2019. The school has built a high-end talent training base in the field of artificial intelligence and a demonstration "artificial intelligence + education" benchmark project, contributing Xidian's strength to China seize the initiative in this high-tech field.

"The must-fight place" leads the discipline trend

Faced with DeepSeek's strong emergence, the field of artificial intelligence has become the "must-fight place" for the layout of disciplines and majors in major universities. In recent years, artificial intelligence laboratories, research institutes, and artificial intelligence colleges have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain.

According to incomplete statistics from the soft science department, since the establishment of the first artificial intelligence college in the country in 2017 by the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, at least 70 undergraduate universities have established artificial intelligence colleges.

On June 5, the School of Artificial Intelligence of Central South University for Nationalities was officially unveiled. The school adheres to "AI for goodness" and "people-oriented" to build a compound talent training system of "artificial intelligence + X"; based on the unique advantages of ethnic colleges and universities, it focuses on cross-research on artificial intelligence and ethnic cultural heritage, border governance, ecological protection, and economic development of ethnic regions. The school will also jointly build an artificial intelligence joint laboratory with Xiaomi Technology Wuhan Co., Ltd., committed to filling the gap in ethnic colleges and universities in the field of developing artificial intelligence disciplines!

In addition, building a scientific research platform in the field of artificial intelligence is also an indispensable part.

At the beginning of the new year of 2025, Fudan University has set up a new Trusted Intelligent Research Institute, recruiting postdoctoral fellows at a high salary, appointing assistant professors, etc., with a basic salary of 600,000 to 1 million yuan, reflecting the school's determination to increase investment in the field of artificial intelligence.

In seizing the major strategic opportunity period for the development of artificial intelligence, on February 8, 2025, Nankai University and Bank of Beijing signed a joint construction agreement on the Artificial Intelligence Finance Laboratory to unveil the Artificial Intelligence Finance Laboratory. Chen Yulu, President of Nankai University, said that this cooperation is an innovative exploration of both parties in the field of science and technology finance. Nankai University will give full play to its profound financial research accumulation and talent training advantages, and strive to promote the construction of a large-scale model of the financial discipline.

However, "the road is long and arduous", the undergraduate major of artificial intelligence is still being explored and built.

Many interviewed experts said that questions about what to learn, how to teach, and what talents to cultivate in artificial intelligence are still to be answered. Compared with students, artificial intelligence majors are more challenging to teachers, and teachers "learning and selling" is a common phenomenon. Many teachers can understand the basic principles of artificial intelligence, but they have no confidence in teaching. Just like "middle school teachers teach advanced mathematics", they cannot immediately know how to teach after they have understood a new thing, so teaching requires a long-term digestion process.

In addition, lower than expected employment is also a concern. Some people have reported that the employment threshold for artificial intelligence has not yet reached ordinary people, and their education is still hard currency. It seems that it is not easy to find a suitable job after graduating from an undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence.

"The development history of artificial intelligence shows that the role of universities is crucial and irreplaceable." Chinese universities are "the biggest of the country" and are making louder voices in the field of artificial intelligence with a more open and confident attitude.

This article is comprehensively compiled by Soft Science.

Original title: "The average annual salary exceeds 300,000! "The hottest" major in China, here we come"