分类： education

India’s decades-long battle against entrance exam question paper leaks has boiled over into national crisis in 2026, following widespread countrywide protests over the breach of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), the country’s top medical school entrance exam. The unrest ultimately forced the resignation of India’s education minister, and families of more than 20 students who died by suicide have linked their deaths directly to the uncertainty and despair sparked by the exam scandal.

In response to the public outrage, Prime Minister Narendra Modi moved quickly to assemble a high-level expert task force led by Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Indian IT giant Infosys, to overhaul the National Testing Agency (NTA) — the government body that administers the country’s largest national entrance exams. Modi has thrown his support behind a proposal to shift all high-stakes entrance exams from traditional pen-and-paper formats to fully computer-based testing (CBT), framing the digital shift as the most effective path to blocking the recurring leaks that have eroded public trust in India’s education assessment system.

India’s Supreme Court, which is currently hearing public interest petitions on the proposed reforms, has praised the government’s commitment to addressing the crisis but issued a critical warning: digital testing alone cannot fully eliminate the risk of paper leaks. This caution highlights the core challenge facing the task force: can technology solve a problem that is rooted at its core in weak governance, skewed incentives, and broken public trust, rather than just format?

Two separate NEET leak incidents, in 2024 and 2026, illustrate just how complicated this issue is, with breaches occurring at very different stages of the exam process to expose systemic flaws. In 2024, the leak occurred after question papers were printed, when sealed transport containers were opened en route to exam centers. Investigators found the breach involved only 40 to 50 connected individuals, and the Supreme Court ruled that the overall integrity of the exam remained intact, rejecting widespread demands for a retest. In contrast, the 2026 leak was traced all the way back to the NTA itself, with internal teachers accused of leaking the papers before they even entered the secure printing and supply chain. Officials confirmed that safeguards for transport, printing, and on-site distribution held firm — the vulnerability existed at the source, long before the secure custody process began.

V Kamakoti, director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and a member of the expert task force, explains that these two incidents lay bare where trust in an examination system ultimately lives. “The roots of trust lie in two places: the teachers who set the question papers and the invigilators who supervise candidates. If either is compromised, the system is vulnerable,” he explained in comments to the BBC.

Officials have already proposed upgrades including widespread CCTV coverage with live central monitoring, and Kamakoti notes that artificial intelligence can add another layer of security, automatically flagging unusual activity such as prolonged unauthorized contact between invigilators and test-takers to allow for real-time intervention. “At least the invigilator part we can certainly handle,” he said.

But for Kamakoti, the most significant jump in security will come from a full shift to online, computer-based testing. He argues that CBT would make large-scale entrance exams far more resistant to tampering, noting that “compromising the technology would be extremely difficult” — a claim backed by more than 10 years of successful large-scale digital testing run by IIT Madras.

IIT Madras already manages Swayam, India’s government-backed national online learning platform, and has administered major high-stakes entrance exams including the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) and the advanced Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for India’s top engineering colleges via CBT for years. Kamakoti explains that these secure systems use constant red teaming — dedicated teams that continuously probe for vulnerabilities — and air-gapped networks that are physically disconnected from the public internet. “No one can hack into that network,” he says, adding that the systems are built to withstand technical disruptions: if a test-taker’s device crashes or loses power, the exam timer automatically pauses and resumes seamlessly on a replacement machine.

Even the most robust digital infrastructure, however, cannot eliminate the human element of risk. For Kamakoti, the single greatest challenge remains securing the question-setting process. NEET is one of the world’s largest multilingual entrance exams, administered in 13 languages to more than 2.2 million candidates annually. Creating a single NEET paper requires a large team of subject experts, translators, reviewers, and moderators, numbering around 50 people total. “If even one person in that entire set is compromised, we are gone,” he warned.

Even with this human risk remaining, CBT does eliminate one major long-standing vulnerability: it removes the need to print, transport, and store millions of physical question papers, the step where many past leaks have occurred.

So why has NEET not shifted to digital testing already? Kamakoti explains that the test has remained pen-and-paper based to preserve fairness: all test-takers take the exam in a single session to prevent any advantage from question exposure across multiple slots. Currently, India’s national digital testing infrastructure can only accommodate around 300,000 candidates per session, a fraction of NEET’s 2.2 million annual test-takers. A full shift to CBT would therefore require either a massive rapid expansion of testing capacity or splitting the exam across multiple testing sessions, a change that brings its own fairness concerns.

Not all experts agree that a shift to digital testing alone is enough to solve India’s leak crisis. Debananda Misra, a policy researcher at the IIT Delhi School of Public Policy, agrees that CBT can cut down on opportunities for physical paper leaks, but argues that the current debate has become overly focused on technology as a cure-all.

“CBT is not a silver bullet,” Misra told the BBC. “It can strengthen exam security and improve efficiency, but it does not address the deeper incentives that drive malpractice.”

Those incentives are driven by extreme scarcity of high-quality, affordable higher education opportunities. This year, nearly 2.2 million students took NEET, and just over half qualified for medical school admission. But heavily subsidized government medical colleges, where a full degree can cost less than 30,000 rupees (around $313), only have seats for fewer than 6% of qualified candidates — or less than 3% of all students who take the exam. Students who miss out on government seats face private college tuition that can run into hundreds of thousands of rupees, a cost out of reach for most Indian families.

Investigators say this extreme scarcity has fueled increasingly sophisticated criminal paper-leak networks that connect corrupt insiders, middlemen, and exam center staff. While CBT closes off old vulnerabilities, it creates new ones. Misra notes that even minor technical disruptions can have lasting, unmeasurable impacts on candidate performance: “A non-functional mouse is not just about pausing the timer. It is also about disruption to concentration.”

Misra also warns that a full shift to CBT risks widening equity gaps in Indian education. Success on digital exams depends not just on subject mastery, but on prior digital experience and access to practice in simulated testing environments — advantages that are heavily concentrated among students who can afford expensive private coaching, and out of reach for many students from low-resourced rural and government schools.

Most fundamentally, Misra argues that India’s examination system puts too much catastrophic pressure on a single high-stakes test. “As long as a single test determines access to scarce opportunities, there will be strong incentives for exam malpractice, regardless of the testing format,” he said.

Misra proposes deeper reforms beyond digital testing: stronger governance of exam agencies through tighter protocols, regular independent audits, greater public accountability, and stricter penalties for malpractice. He also suggests structural changes such as random allocation of multiple equivalent question papers, or localized test versions, so that a single breach in one area does not invalidate an entire national exam. Long-term, he argues India must reduce its over-reliance on single high-stakes entrance tests by creating multiple assessment opportunities and broader pathways into higher education.

“If the purpose is to generate a ranked list and match students to institutions, perhaps we should also think about creating greater diversity on both sides,” he said.

Prime Minister Modi has repeatedly pledged to crack down on exam fraud, promising since 2023 that the “paper-leak mafia” would be held accountable, saying that “those playing with the future of young people will not be spared,” and framing the government’s response as a “war footing” effort to end leaks. After the 2024 NEET leak, the government appointed a high-level review committee led by India’s former space agency chief that produced the most comprehensive assessment of India’s exam system to date. But reportedly only 57% of the committee’s more than 100 recommendations have been implemented, and leaks have continued to disrupt national exams.

The task force faces a tight deadline to deliver its overhaul: India’s annual entrance exam season for medicine, engineering, university, and postgraduate programs runs from December through May, so major reforms must be finalized within the next one to two months to be ready for the next cycle.

Ultimately, experts agree the task force’s success will not be measured by how many exams shift to digital formats, but by whether it can restore the faith of India’s young people that the system that determines their future is fair.

In the city of Kumagaya, located just northwest of Japan’s capital Tokyo, a group of young art students at Kumagaya Girls High School are huddled together this July, brainstorming their entry for one of the country’s most unique student art competitions: Kokuban Art Koshien, the annual national chalk-on-blackboard art championship for middle and high school creators.

Blending the Japanese word for blackboard, *kokuban*, with the name of Japan’s iconic high school baseball national tournament held at Koshien Stadium, the competition has grown steadily since its launch in 2015, drawing roughly 300 participating middle and high schools across the country every year. All works are created directly on classroom blackboards, typically during students’ summer break, and range wildly in scope and theme: from vibrant, dynamic renderings of dinosaurs, marine life and household pets, to reimaginations of classic manga scenes, reproductions of iconic masterworks from Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa to the Mona Lisa and Da Vinci’s Last Supper, and surreal original concepts like underwater classrooms. Even meta pieces depicting a person writing on a blackboard itself have made appearances. Every entry is a collaborative project, bringing together teams as small as two creators or as large as dozens of students, blending individual creativity with group coordination to bring a shared vision to life.

Unlike many established fine art forms that prioritize permanent, individual work, Kokuban Art Koshien stands out for its experimental, accessible nature. Kazunari Minamishima, an art instructor at Saitama Prefectural High School of the Arts whose students have competed for years, explains that the medium gives young creators freedom that oil painting, sculpture and other traditional forms do not. “It’s still a work in progress,” he notes of the evolving art form itself.

The competition was founded by Tokyo-based blackboard manufacturer Nichigaku Co., after company leaders spotted a viral, incredibly detailed replica of Da Vinci’s *Last Supper* drawn anonymously on a Japanese school blackboard. At the time, company president Tomohiro Yoshida explains, while casual chalk drawing was common in schools, there was no formal recognized genre of blackboard art. “Back then, there was graffiti, but there was no genre called blackboard art,” Yoshida says.

While the contest is not designed as a direct marketing push — all Japanese schools already equip their classrooms with blackboards, after all — Yoshida says he is proud to see many past contestants go on to build careers as professional artists. Because full blackboards cannot be transported for in-person judging, organizers collect high-resolution photographs of each completed work to evaluate, with winners set to be announced this coming November.

The unique medium of chalk on blackboard also allows for creative techniques that cannot be replicated with traditional paints. Artists dust loose chalk powder across the surface to create a soft, stardust-like glow, smudge pigment with fingers or tissue paper to build muted shadows and gradients, and can even replicate the translucent shine of a dragon’s eyeball with skilled shading. One past award-winning entry even mixed chalk pigment with water and sprayed it onto the blackboard in the style of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock.

Open to all Japanese schools, including international institutions, organizers have even expressed hopes of expanding the competition to international participants in coming years. Unlike unpermitted street graffiti common in Western countries, all blackboard art pieces for the competition are created with explicit school permission, reflecting Japan’s emphasis on respect for public spaces and collective order. For participating students, the collaborative process is the biggest draw, even more than winning awards.

Kento Misumi, who competed in the contest as a high school student and now works for organizer Nichigaku, says the experience taught him far more than individual art creation ever could. “The challenge of trying to sort out the conflicting opinions of my two collaborators is the biggest memory about taking part in blackboard Koshien, as opposed to doing your own artwork,” he explained. Misumi recalled that even a single piece required multiple days of coordinated work from his team, a far more demanding process than many first-time competitors expect. “I want young people today to go through the experience,” he added.

That spirit of collaborative growth is on full display at Kumagaya Girls High School, where a team of first-time competitors are preparing their 2026 entry, building on the legacy of older students who have won top national prizes in past years. “I see it as a chance to deepen my relationships with my schoolmates,” said Chiho Ninomiya, one of the student participants. “It’s our first time so I’m not sure we will be able to do a good job. But even if we don’t win, it’d have been worth it as long as we become better friends while doing it.”

For this year’s entry, the team is brainstorming a playful concept: parody spinoffs of classic fine artworks by artists like Renoir, juxtaposed with vivid scenes of uniformed Japanese high school students capturing everyday campus life. Ninomiya notes that working with chalk on blackboard is a very different experience than drawing with pencils or paint, requiring constant adjustment, erasing, and reworking as the team learns the quirks of the medium.

It is true that after the contest is photographed and judged, every labor-intensive piece will eventually be erased to make the blackboard usable for classes again. Proponents of the competition say this impermanence is part of its unique educational power: it teaches students a quiet lesson about the fragility of creation, the transient nature of life, and the courage to create even when a work will not last forever. For the community of Kokuban Art Koshien, a blackboard chalk drawing is only truly complete the moment it is erased.

More than 130 years ago, Indian-born British author Rudyard Kipling famously asked, “And what should they know of England who only England know?” A staunch advocate of the British Empire, Kipling argued that British identity could not be separated from the project of imperial expansion that shaped the nation’s global standing for centuries. He chided ordinary Britons for their lack of awareness and engagement with the empire that defined their country’s role on the world stage. That question remains as relevant today as it was in 1891, as a fierce new debate over the teaching of imperial history in British secondary schools has reignited across public and political spheres.

The latest exchange began on a recent podcast hosted by Zack Polanski, leader of the UK’s left-wing Green Party. Reflecting on his own secondary education, Polanski noted that his history curriculum focused heavily on the Tudors, Roman occupation of Britain, and the Second World War, with barely any mention of the British Empire or its centuries of colonial expansion. “Maybe schools have got better but I imagine we’re still not there,” he said.

Joining Polanski as a guest was prominent historian William Dalrymple, who pushed further on the gap in modern history education. Dalrymple acknowledged that optional A-level modules covering the British Empire do exist for secondary students, but stressed these are never part of the mandatory core curriculum. Few teachers feel properly trained to teach the topic, he added, leaving imperial history as a niche subject studied only by a small minority of pupils. “Most British people are entirely ignorant about what is, for better or worse, the most important thing Britain ever did,” Dalrymple argued. He specifically called out the complete absence of any teaching on the British Mandate in Palestine, Britain’s role in the events leading to the 1948 Nakba, and the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral lands.

The comments quickly drew pushback from conservative political and media circles. Former Conservative Education Secretary Michael Gove, currently editor of *The Spectator*, intervened on social media, dismissing the critique as the complaints of two privately educated men reflecting on their own outdated school experiences. Gove claimed that the current national curriculum for state-funded schools already covers the British Empire extensively. Max Jeffery, a writer-at-large for *The Spectator*, expanded on this defense, arguing that for 13 years, the national curriculum has required pupils in Years 7 through 9 to study “Britain’s ideas, political power, industry and Empire.” In a separate piece for the outlet UnHerd, writer Samuel Rubinstein added that the empire has long been part of the national history curriculum, and accused Polanski and Dalrymple of pushing for a national “exercise in self-flagellation” over Britain’s past.

But a close look at the structure of Britain’s education system and available curriculum data tells a more complicated story. While Gove and other critics point to the national curriculum as proof of comprehensive imperial history teaching, the national curriculum only applies to the small share of secondary schools in England controlled by local authorities. Today, 85 percent of English secondary schools are academies or free schools, which are not required to follow the national curriculum – and private schools are also exempt. Even for schools that do follow the national curriculum for Key Stages 1 through 3, content covering the empire is listed as a “non-statutory example,” meaning it is optional rather than required. The only mandatory history topic in the entire curriculum is the Holocaust.

Further data shows that even at the GCSE and A-level stages, where optional imperial history modules are offered by exam boards, very few students actually engage with the topic. Only 36 percent of teachers who cover the British Empire do so at the GCSE level, and that number drops to just 23 percent at the A-level stage. Just 9.6 percent of all GCSE history entries include a module focused on migration or empire, and all units on the empire offered by major UK exam boards are optional rather than mandatory. Even the module that focuses on imperial legacies, offered by exam board Edexcel, is titled “Migrants in Britain” and centers the effects of empire rather than the structure and impact of the imperial project itself.

The gap between official claims and on-the-ground teaching is backed by major national research. A large-scale study published earlier this year, led by researchers from the University of Oxford and University College London, found that only 16 percent of teachers believe Britain’s imperial past is taught well enough in UK schools. This gap exists despite overwhelming agreement on the importance of the topic: 94 percent of teachers and 79 percent of surveyed students said all young people should be taught about the British Empire. A recent government curriculum review recommended wider teaching of “History’s inherent diversity” through analysis of a broader range of sources, but did not specifically name the empire as a required topic.

Dalrymple, who is based in India, told Middle East Eye that the lack of education creates tangible gaps in British public understanding of global perceptions of the country. “There are more modules out there than twenty years ago, but it’s still overwhelmingly true that most people leave school without any clear idea about how the world sees us,” he said. “Living in India, I see Brits coming out, including high commissioners, who have no perception of how we are regarded and are very surprised to discover that the general impression of the empire is very different to how it’s laid out in their own education.”

Gurminder Bhambra, a sociologist at the University of Sussex who specializes in colonialism and modern British identity, argues that imperial history is foundational to understanding modern Britain itself. “The history of Britain as a modern nation cannot be understood separate to its history of colonisation – from the wealth that contributed to its development and the peoples that call it home, every aspect of Britain has been significantly shaped by empire,” she explained. “The failure to teach this history properly is what enables some to deny the citizenship claims of those that they deem other and, perhaps more perniciously, denies the very basis on which they make such claims.”

The gap in teaching is particularly stark when it comes to the legacy of the British Empire in the Middle East, specifically the lead-up to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Britain governed Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for three decades, facilitating large-scale Jewish immigration amid rising persecution in Europe before abruptly withdrawing in 1948. The British withdrawal paved the way for the establishment of the state of Israel and the Nakba, the displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians that remains at the core of the modern conflict. Last year, then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy acknowledged the historical injustice of the unfulfilled promise of equal rights for Palestinians in the Balfour Declaration, when announcing the UK government’s intention to recognize Palestinian statehood. But almost no British secondary students learn this history in school.

Data from 2020 shows that less than 2 percent of GCSE history students in England study any module covering the Middle East. In 2023, only 44 UK schools taught the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the GCSE level, and just 0.5 percent of all GCSE history entries that year were for the only module on the topic offered by any major exam board. “The Nakba is not taught in British schools, and in many British textbooks a lie is told,” Dalrymple said. “I remember my primary school geography textbooks talked about Israelis making the deserts bloom. The fact that an entire people there were shunted out because the British did nothing to protect them, and indeed created the situation whereby they could be evicted, is unknown.” This ignorance, he added, shapes modern public and political discourse: “The results of this can be seen in speeches in parliament, and the attitudes of newsreaders. MPs and presenters simply do not know who these people in Gaza are and why they would have cause for complaint.”

Public opinion on how the empire should be taught is clear: a 2025 poll found that 78 percent of UK adults believe teaching should include a balanced mix of positive and negative aspects of the British Empire to give pupils a comprehensive view. Dalrymple pushes back against claims that calls for more comprehensive teaching are rooted in a desire to force “woke guilt” on students. “No one’s asking for a ‘woke’ guilt trip, but for British people to have the tools to understand the charges being levelled against them,” he said. “They shouldn’t be taught to hate their country or have an entirely negative view of their ancestry, but it’s important to understand what the debates are. The idea that the empire was a force for good is simply not how most of the world understands it.”

As modern Britain continues to evolve, with a large share of the population descended from immigrants who arrived after the collapse of the empire in the mid-20th century, the question of how to teach imperial history remains deeply tied to the question of national identity. As 19th century imperial commentator John Robert Seeley described it, the British empire was the “extension of the English nationality into new lands,” and modern historian Robert JC Young has framed Englishness as a global identity shaped by imperial expansion. As current data makes clear, this central pillar of British history and national identity remains largely untaught in UK secondary schools – even as overwhelming majorities of teachers and students agree it deserves a place in the curriculum.

In a landmark achievement for Hong Kong’s higher education sector, eight local institutions have secured positions in the highly competitive 2026 Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings, with two of the city’s flagship universities holding onto their places among the region’s top 10 academic institutions.

The University of Hong Kong maintains its standing as one of Asia’s leading universities, climbing one spot to claim sixth place regionally, while The Chinese University of Hong Kong holds the 10th position. Four other established Hong Kong institutions also earned places in the top 50: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology ranks 12th, City University of Hong Kong takes 14th, Hong Kong Polytechnic University comes in at 18th, and Hong Kong Baptist University secured the 40th spot.

Most notably, two smaller Hong Kong institutions have broken new ground by earning their first ever placements in the Asia top 100 list. The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) debuted at an impressive 37th place, while Lingnan University earned its spot at 84th.

Christine Choi, Secretary for Education of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government, attributed this collective strong performance to the administration’s long-term strategy of sustained funding investment and targeted policy measures designed to strengthen Hong Kong’s global education competitiveness. In a public social media statement, she noted that the outcome reflects the consistent progress of Hong Kong’s higher education ecosystem on the global stage.

Choi added that the Education Bureau will continue to deepen collaborative partnerships with local higher education institutions to consolidate and expand Hong Kong’s position as a leading international hub for tertiary education and global talent development.

John Lee Chi-Kin, President of EdUHK, described the university’s first-time entry into the top 100 ranking as a defining milestone in the institution’s development. He emphasized that the achievement is a direct reflection of the university’s unwavering commitment to advancing high-impact, solution-focused research and fostering a dynamic, globally connected learning environment that attracts students and scholars from across the world.

The annual Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings is one of the most widely recognized assessments of higher education performance across the continent. The ranking evaluates participating institutions across 135 independent indicators grouped into five core performance pillars: teaching quality, research environment, the real-world impact and citation quality of published research, international outlook and collaboration, and industry knowledge transfer and engagement.

China has launched its first ever nationwide pilot initiative that merges professional higher education with systematic standardization training, a landmark move designed to build a skilled workforce that combines deep industry expertise with mastery of uniform industry rule-setting and implementation. The initiative, announced jointly by the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Ministry of Education on Tuesday, has approved 281 individual projects hosted by 253 higher education institutions across 30 of China’s provincial-level administrative regions.

The training program targets strategically important growth industries and core livelihood sectors, spanning high-priority areas from artificial intelligence and intelligent manufacturing to the fast-expanding low-altitude economy, food quality and safety, and modern consumer and business services. To bridge the gap between academic learning and real-world industry demand, more than 80% of the approved projects have partnered with external stakeholders including manufacturing enterprises, research institutes, and other standardization-focused bodies, bringing 373 separate organizations into the initiative overall. Authorities project the program will train close to 40,000 skilled professionals who combine strong disciplinary foundations with advanced proficiency in standardization knowledge and practice.

Three distinct training models have been rolled out to cater to different talent development goals, each with clear enrollment and curricular requirements. The foundational public education model requires participating institutions to offer at least three standardization-focused public elective courses, totaling a minimum of three academic credits, and reach at least 400 enrolled students within a two-year timeline. This model is focused on building a broad base of core knowledge in standardization theory and methodological frameworks.

The targeted professional education model, by contrast, centers on applying standardization practices to on-the-ground industry challenges. Participating institutions must deliver at least four specialized standardization-integrated courses, or one or more “mini-major” programs consisting of no fewer than six courses totaling 10 academic credits. This pathway trains students to apply standardization methodologies to solve complex professional problems in their core fields.

For institutions aiming to cultivate high-level specialized talent, the multi-degree model supports the creation of full second bachelor’s degree programs in standardization-related fields, requiring a minimum enrollment of 20 students within a four-year implementation window. This pathway is designed to produce senior talent that combines deep expertise in a core industry discipline with advanced specialized knowledge of standardization.

Leading national higher education institutions including Renmin University of China and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications are among the selected pilot participants. Industry and academic leaders have widely welcomed the initiative, pointing to a critical nationwide gap in skilled standardization talent that has held back industry growth and global competitiveness.

Jia Xiaoshuang, an associate professor at Renmin University of China’s School of Information Resource Management, explained that many of China’s top technical experts in cutting-edge fields from high-speed rail to artificial intelligence possess world-class technical skills, but lack training in translating technical concepts into formal standard language. “Standardization is an independent academic discipline, and many technical practitioners remain unfamiliar with its core rules and processes,” she noted. As China works to expand its global industrial influence, demand for professionals capable of drafting national, industry, and group standards has risen sharply, making the pilot program a critical first step to address this gap.

Jia emphasized the strategic importance of standardization leadership in global trade and technology: “A long-held business adage holds that second-rate companies manufacture products, while first-rate companies set industry standards. If China cannot secure a meaningful voice in global standard-setting, its domestic products and technologies will face significant barriers to gaining widespread international acceptance.”

For the fast-evolving artificial intelligence sector, standardization training is an especially urgent priority, according to Gu Xinyu, an associate professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications’ School of Artificial Intelligence. “AI technology is advancing at breakneck speed and penetrating deep into every vertical industry, and it increasingly touches on issues of public safety, data compliance, and cross-system interoperability,” Gu explained. “Without unified, widely accepted standards, the sector will face persistent problems of technical incompatibility, isolated data silos, and unaddressed safety risks.”

Using intelligent transportation as a case in point, Gu noted that AI can only reach its full transformative potential if all stakeholders adopt common data formats, communication protocols, and interface specifications. “If AI models, sensors, and control systems from different manufacturers cannot connect and share data seamlessly, data silos and fragmented systems will drastically undermine overall system coordination,” she said. “Standardization acts as the critical bridge that moves AI from laboratory prototypes to large-scale industrial deployment, ensuring the technology remains controllable, trustworthy, and interoperable across platforms.”

In line with the pilot program requirements, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications is integrating “standardization thinking” directly into its core artificial intelligence curriculum. Core AI courses will now include dedicated modules covering intelligent communication standards, AI ethics standards, data quality standards, model development and evaluation standards, and system security standards. “Our goal is to train students not just as technology innovators, but as active participants and even lead formulators of global industry rules — professionals who can embed standardization best practices directly into their technical work,” Gu said.