In 2020, the Ministry of Education issued the Declaration on the Construction of New Liberal Arts, which placed the reform and innovation of liberal arts education on a key agenda, and reflected the government’s emphasis on deep media convergence and media talent cultivation². The concept of “new liberal arts” was proposed after a long period of brewing. As early as 2019, 13 government agencies, including the Committee of Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Science and Technology, jointly launched the Six Excellence and One Top-notch Plan 2.0, which was aimed to promote the implementation of reform initiatives for new engineering, new liberal arts and new agricultural sciences in higher education³. In December 2025, 5 government agencies, including the National Development and Reform Commission, the National Data Administration, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, jointly issued the Opinions on Strengthening the Construction of Data Element Disciplines and Digital Talent Workforce, which explicitly stated that it would support the specialized education institutions in media, arts and other fields to enhance the construction of their competitive disciplines such as digital media and digital arts. This series of policy signals indicates that the interdisciplinary cultivation of digital media talents has been elevated to a national strategic level, and compared to the traditional media talent cultivation, it undoubtedly has greater adaptability, pertinence and innovation.

At present, a hallmark of the mediatized society is the comprehensive penetration of media power into all spheres of society—not only shaping a reflection of the real world but also constructing a virtual and ever-expanding space. Media convergence has accelerated the formation of the mediatized society, and users’ reading, listening and watching habits have undergone significant changes, they created new opportunities for the integration of industry and education. Specifically, it is necessary to break through traditional boundaries in talent cultivation, especially to deeply integrate with various industries and leverage “media+” to forge an advanced form of the mediatized society ([2]). In 2025, the CMIT Competition attracted over 500,000 teachers and students from both domestic and international education institutions, with a total of 170,000 works submitted. This reflects the unprecedented expansion of the topic popularity and educational space for the integration of industry and education in digital media. To this end, the cultivation of digital media talents should closely align with current trends, actively expand educational space and perspectives, and firmly uphold the principles of objectivity, fairness, independence and authenticity inherent in media studies, in order to better adapt to the new challenges and requirements faced by the mediatized society.

The issuance of the Opinions on Accelerating the Deep Integration and Development of Media in September 2020 clarified the orientation of industry development at the institutional level and indirectly put forward new goals for talent cultivation⁴. This involves adapting to the “human-machine collaboration” environment of intelligent media, such as production, distribution and interaction, and enriching the ways, contents and formats of media dissemination. Taking Chengdu as an example, the total scale of the digital cultural and creative industry is expected to exceed CNY 410 billion by 2025, with a year-on-year growth of 8.3%, it has launched a global open call for creative works by organizing events such as the Chengdu International Digital Cultural and Creative Application Competition and the Panda Homeland · Giant Panda Culture and Creativity Contest, aiming to establish itself as a hub for digital cultural and creative achievements⁵. Against this background, there is an increasing demand for talents in fields such as technical art and engine development, and the shortage of talents for these emerging technical positions is also constantly expanding. Therefore, it is necessary to guide specialized education to shift from “classroom” to “industry”, strive to leverage practice to improve both teaching and learning, and establish a framework for cultivating the capabilities of interdisciplinary talents.

According to the Implementation Plan for the Review and Evaluation of Undergraduate Education and Teaching in Ordinary Higher Education Institutions (2021-2025) issued in 2021, general education has already been included in the key assessment scope, including academic curricula, innovation and entrepreneurship education, and students’ comprehensive competence. Furthermore, the guidelines provided by the Ministry of Education and certain local authorities also explicitly stated that general education “is an important guarantee for the quality of education in ordinary higher education institutions”⁶. However, when observing the cultivation of digital media talents in China, we are confronted with the problems of weak general education and absence of humanistic education. For instance, in some education institutions, the proportion of specialized courses is much higher than that of general education courses, while in a few education institutions, general education courses only account for a quarter of the total courses. It is evident that the concept of “specialty first” still holds an absolute dominant position.

In 2025, five government agencies, including the National Development and Reform Commission, jointly issued the Opinions on Strengthening the Construction of Data Element Disciplines and Digital Talent Workforce, which explicitly stated that it would support the specialized education institutions in media, arts and other fields to enhance the construction of their competitive disciplines such as digital media and digital arts⁷. However, in practice, traditional challenges such as disciplinary barriers remain highly prominent, and the disconnection between technology courses and art courses is widespread. For instance, when the traditional teaching model encounters the cutting-edge technologies such as generative AI, intelligent editing and virtual production, it shows the problems such as lagging curriculum system, disciplinary disconnection and lacking industry-education integration, and traps in a predicament of “easy to piece together but difficult to integrate”.

Looking back at the traditional model of industry-education integration, there are problems such as rigid university-enterprise collaboration forms and insufficient deep integration. Most of the industry-education integration is limited to forms such as internship bases and lecture cooperation, which show the problems such as loose collaboration mechanisms, disconnection between teaching and industrial practice, and lagging industry feedback. Furthermore, there is a common misalignment between enterprise recruitment demands and university course delivery, whether in terms of timing or contents. For instance, students’ participation in industrial practice is mostly carried out at the graduation internship stage, which is disconnected from the systematic specialized learning during their school years. Moreover, there is a significant “information gap” between front-line teaching and industry development, due to the influence of the latest technical standards in the industry and the changes in market demand.

At present, China has explicitly called for strengthening practical education and enhancing students’ practical innovation capabilities, this is an important guideline for practical education in the current context. However, an examination of the actual situation of digital media talent cultivation reveals that the practical education is relatively loose. For instance, most practical education mainly relies on on-campus simulations. Although it can provide students with certain practical opportunities, students often feel unprepared when confronted with complex and dynamic media tasks, due to the lack of hand-on experience in real projects, this leads to an irrelevance between practical contents and job requirements, making it difficult to cultivate cross-link collaboration skills and systematic thinking.

The United States is a pioneer in the global digital media industry and media education, its model to cultivating media talents is based on an “collegiate system”, and it has undergone a transition from the early “emphasizing practical skills over theoretical knowledge” to the later “balancing practical skills and theoretical knowledge”. The model adopted by the United States is centered on the core principle of “integrating general education with specialized education” to ensuring a high degree of alignment between talent development and industry demands ([1]). Its driving force primarily stems from endogenous market and industrial demands, the government establishes a closed-loop constraint through legislative funding and industry certification. Unlike the market-driven model adopted in the United States, since the establishment of its Industry-based National Development Strategy in the 1960s, the government of South Korea has incorporated vocational education and industrial talent cultivation into the core of its national development strategy ([7]). From a macro perspective of the media industry, South Korea holds a leading position in the global dissemination of film and television culture, it has earned widespread acclaim across the market through the output of numerous outstanding productions, such as Descendants of the Sun and My Love from the Star ([14]). It also shows distinct features of government leadership and continuous policy iteration. Compared with the models of the United States and South Korea, the most distinctive feature of the Russian model is that the integration of industry and education has been incorporated into the strategic framework of Reshaping National Technological Sovereignty. Its goal is not only to solve the problem of talent cultivation but also to respond to the demand for industrial autonomy and controllability under the technological blockade of the West ([13]; [6]). By comparison, the United States emphasizes the endogenous drive stemming from market and industrial demands, South Korea emphasizes government leadership and institutionalized top-level design, and Russia emphasizes national strategy guidance and technological sovereignty reshaping. The differences in driving forces among these three determine the different directions of their university-enterprise relationships, curriculum reforms and practical teaching.

With regard to the industry-education integration for digital media in the United States, the School Outreach Program was launched in 2024 in order to cultivate a new generation of digital sports journalists, and the School of Media and Communication at Western Kentucky University was selected as one of the first partner institutions ([10]). The Program enables students to participate in real job tasks such as story editing, digital video production and SEO analysis through a structured mentorship program. In addition, the Digital Media and Design Department at the University of Connecticut has established a cooperation with its Athletic Department to enable dozens of students to gain work experience in the sports and entertainment industry through such cooperation, this demonstrates the deep transition of industry-education integration in the United States ([4]). Anymotion, an enterprise affiliated to Dongseo University in South Korea, has been successively selected for the University-affiliated Enterprises Support Program since 2019, a program jointly administered by the Ministry of Education and the Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology. The Program aims to establish an OSMU-style content ecosystem that seamlessly integrates the entire process from planning, production to commercialization, in order to support students and local creators in realizing their creative ideas and facilitate entrepreneurship and employment. In contrast, the organizational carriers of industry-education integration in Russia are more characterized by physicality and clustering. At present, Russia has established 15 science and education centers, with 166 universities, 150 research institutes and 447 enterprises as their members, covering 36 federal subjects. Each science and education center is not only a scientific research hub but also a talent cultivation base and an industrial technology commercialization platform, effectively ensuring the synergy among education, science and industry ([3]). In 2022, Russia launched the “Professionalization” federal project, aiming to build 940 “industry-education integration clusters” by 2030, covering half of Russia’s vocational colleges and 4,000 enterprises. It will consistently provide the relevant training and guarantee for the integration of industry and education by clarifying the respective rights and responsibilities, objectives, and phased tasks of all stakeholders ([13]). By comparison, the United States is characterized by cooperative education and deep integration with enterprises, South Korea is characterized by university-affiliated enterprises, city-university symbiosis and regional innovation ecosystem, and Russia is characterized by physical platforms such as science and education centers and industry-education integration clusters. The common point of the three countries is that they all strive to break through loose internship cooperation; however, their organizational carriers and collaborative logics differ significantly.

The model adopted by the United States is centered on the core principle of “integrating general education with specialized education” to ensuring a high degree of alignment between talent cultivation and industry demands ([5]). Its curriculum system emphasizes the integration of general education and specialized education and the interdisciplinary approach, adapts to the demand for interdisciplinary digital media talents, and fosters the mutual empowerment between talent cultivation and industrial innovation. Disciplines such as digital media production, digital marketing and intelligent communication have been included in the key funding scope for career development and technical education, reflecting the close alignment between curriculum design and industry positions. South Korea incorporates the development of education institutions into the regional innovation ecosystem under the Industry-University Cooperation Promotion Act and the NCS System, and its curriculum aims to foster the Alignment of course specialization and position modularization. Hankuk University of Foreign Studies established its School of Culture and Technology Integration, which includes a Department of Digital Contents to offer integrated education covering creative storytelling, cutting-edge digital technologies, and content business capabilities. In addition, through the iteration of the Leading Higher Vocational Colleges Support Project in Emerging Industries from 1.0 to 2.0, South Korea has expanded the support scope from four emerging industries to five emerging industries and increased the number of supported cutting-edge technologies from 21 to 28, aiming to consistently promote the update of curriculum and competency standards ([12]; [8]). The industry-education integration model of Russia demonstrates a fundamental shift in its curriculum restructuring driven by competency standards from “what teachers can teach” to “what the industry needs”, which is key to its success in this field. The Graduate Competency Model and the Digital Competency Builder platforms adopted by Russia may serve as methodological references for digital media curriculum reform in China. By comparison, the curriculum system of the United States emphasizes the integration of general education and specialized education and the interdisciplinary approach, the curriculum system of South Korea highlights the alignment of course specialization and position modularization, and the curriculum system of Russia prioritizes the restructuring of competency standards oriented towards industrial demands. This reflects a shared emphasis among these three countries on aligning curriculum with industrial demands.

The horizontal comparisons of international practices and successful experiences may be made from multiple dimensions such as driving forces and institutional design, university-industry collaboration and organizational carriers, and curriculum systems and competency standards, please refer to Table 1 for details.

Specifically, the American model is mainly based on endogenous market and industrial demands, with deep integration between enterprises and talent cultivation. The government leverages extensive legislative funding and industry certification to establish a closed-loop constraint for the entire talent cultivation process. The South Korean model demonstrates a distinct government-led advantage. Under the Industry-University Cooperation Promotion Act and the NCS System, it incorporates the development of education institutions into the regional innovation ecosystem, and its curriculum aims to foster the alignment of course specialization and position modularization. The Russian model is guided by national strategy, leveraging tangible carriers such as science and education centers and industry-education integration clusters to advance organized scientific research, and utilizing the Graduate Competency Model and the Digital Competency Builder platforms to implement targeted talent cultivation. The common experiences of these three countries demonstrate that the effectiveness of industry-education integration depends on institutional design and in-depth collaboration, rather than the superiority or inferiority of a single element.

Table 1. A comparative of the industry-education integration models for digital media in the United States, South Korea, and Russia.

Compared with the traditional education model, the concept of general education profoundly embodies the core value of people-oriented. It follows a talent cultivation logic of “knowledge accumulation - capability improvement - quality development”, particularly emphasizing the social responsibility and value orientation of digital media talents, and is committed to the all-round growth and development of talents. General education is regarded as an ideal form of specialized education, aiming to cultivate individuals with a broad vision, extensive cognition and free thinking, which is consistent with the humanistic education objectives of digital media talent cultivation abroad.

First, we should cultivate the “employment and entrepreneurship” talent awareness. Since the implementation of the National Medium and Long-Term Talent Development Plan Outline (2010-2020), the government has elevated its focus on “talent” to a higher level, placing greater emphasis on the comprehensive and all-round development of specialized talents⁸. As a novel form of media, digital media should empower specialized talents to explore new career “outlets” by seamlessly integrating “employment and entrepreneurship”. For instance, we may refer to the Youth Creator Employment and Entrepreneurship Support Program in Seoul, South Korea, which aims to cultivate interdisciplinary talent and sets annual targets of supporting over 80 individuals in securing employment and over 50 individuals in commencing entrepreneurship. China could adopt this integrated employment-entrepreneurship support model, precisely matching the digital media talent cultivation with the regional industrial demands, leveraging the strategic opportunity presented by industry-education integration to select outstanding talents and provide them with platforms for specialized growth and entrepreneurship, and effectively solving the problems of practical application and value creation. Second, we should provide the “cultural media” cultivation orientation. With the enhancement of China’s cultural competitiveness, the export of culture has become an inevitable trend. Therefore, it is essential to fully permeate the awareness of cultural media in the cultivation of digital media talents, helping students deeply understand the logic between culture and their major. This will open up and establish a new dimension for major development, enabling them to leverage their unique competitiveness to meet the higher requirements for digital media talents in the new era.

Under the background of educational reform in higher education institutions, the introduction of new liberal arts, new engineering and other concepts not only represents a comprehensive optimization of the disciplinary framework but also creates an opportunity for the deep intersection of different disciplines. The demand for integration between liberal arts and engineering is more urgent in the cultivation of digital media talents, that is, the intersection of “art + technology” should be achieved in education ([9]). From the perspective of the essence of digital media, with the increasing trend of media convergence, profound changes are taking place in talent cultivation and job requirements. In the pursuit of the cutting-edge of professional technology, it is inevitable that the talents are required to possess higher comprehensive practical skills when pursuing cutting-edge professional technologies, including AI, big data, 3D and other technologies. Digital media is also a platform for generating news aesthetics, which requires the specialized talents to have a keen artistic aesthetics to make the content generation and dissemination of digital media distinctive.

In practical teaching, the education institutions should fully draw on the advanced domestic and international experiences, pay attention to the optimization of the design of technology courses and art courses, adapt the curriculum system to the background of the “Internet+” era, incorporate cultural knowledge, digital media and product development into the key system of talent cultivation, and meet the diversified demands of the media industry in the new environment. Tianjin Foreign Studies University established its School of Digital Animation and Media Industry in September 2024, which is the first industry-specific school in Tianjin that integrates the digital art major and the intelligent interaction industry. By incorporating industry standards and corporate needs into its framework, as well as optimizing its curriculum and teaching contents, the school realizes the organic integration of its educational resources and the social resources by introducing industry standards and enterprise demands and optimizing curriculum design and teaching contents. Specifically, on one hand, the specialty grouping should adopt a “multi-blooming-point” strategy, focusing on the combination of technologies and the arts, taking into account various dimensions such as curriculum system, teaching mode, teaching practice, international cooperation and innovation & entrepreneurship, equipping students with strong professional competencies and creative inspiration in line with the requirements of news communication and digital media. On the other hand, the capability grouping should follow a “step-by-step” progression. We should establish a complete “teaching-learning-guidance-practice-production” talent cultivation system, and utilize the context of industry-education integration to design students’ professional growth paths. As shown in Figure 1.

In the evolution of the media industry today, the emergence of new technologies has become the core driving force leading changes. In the cultivation of digital media talents, it is urgent to deepen the understanding and adaptation of intelligent technology thinking, and strive to integrate cutting-edge technologies into the teaching practice of specialized education, thereby reshaping the discipline structure and achieving technology empowerment in educational transformation. In particular, the explosive rise of intelligent software such as ChatGPT has undoubtedly posed a significant challenge to traditional digital media. In the context of the “human-machine rivalry”, we should seek a balance and integration between the two ([11]).

Figure 1. Intersection of specialized courses, and talent cultivation logic.

At present, the emergence of machine-assisted writing, intelligent proofreading and AI-powered live streamers has undoubtedly posed new professional application challenges for the digital media major, however, these challenges are not the root cause hindering its development. To this end, the objectives of talent cultivation must be grounded in aligning with the demands of the new era, converting the challenges posed by technology into “opportunities”, and guiding digital media talents to quickly integrate into the new media ecosystem, and making full use of the in-depth mining, precise analysis and comprehensive judgment of data from planning, interviewing, editing to release. In terms of educational practice, it is also necessary to impart the fundamentals of mathematics, principles of logic, basic theories of intelligent computer, and intelligent algorithms, thereby fostering the distinctive interdisciplinary competencies of digital media talents and facilitating the transition of this discipline from a mere liberal art discipline to a diverse engineering discipline.

Furthermore, amid the continuous innovation and development of media technologies, the deep integration of education and media technologies has become a “new normal”. This is particularly relevant as the industry is currently undergoing a profound transformation characterized by knowledge integration and system restructuring, it not only responds to the demands of pan-media, immersive media and intelligent media but also aligns with the inherent requirements of the reform of digital media talent cultivation. Therefore, it is essential to further explore the potential of industry-education integration, strengthen the synergy between professional skills and value guidance of specialized talents, and establish a comprehensive and in-depth talent cultivation system through the transformation between in-class activities and out-of-class activities as well as theory and practice, thereby cultivating interdisciplinary digital media talents.

The cultivation of digital media talents from the perspective of industry-education integration focuses on adapting to current industry trends and keeping talent cultivation in harmony with industrial demands. Therefore, the higher education institutions should emphasize the “practical” teaching approach in their talent cultivation, providing students with opportunities for skill development from a broader range of dimensions, with the aim of accurately meeting the needs of specific industries or enterprises. Meanwhile, it is necessary to attract social educational resources and unite universities, governments, enterprises and industry associations to jointly create a new type of educational entity characterized by corporate-style management, modern governance and market-oriented operation.

For digital media, we should focus on “talent” centers to establish and maintain in-depth cooperative relationships. For instance, the “industry-specific schools” and “industry practice bases” successively established by certain higher education institutions are exemplary cases of tripartite collaboration among government, enterprises and universities, focusing on digital economy development⁹. In 2024, Guangdong Finance & Trade Vocational College partnered with NetEase Youdao to jointly establish the first School of Digital Creative Industry and Digital Innovation Workshop in Guangdong Province; in the same year, Wuxi Technician College of Jiangsu Province partnered with Phoenix Digital Media (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. to jointly establish the School of Phoenix Digital Media Industry, this demonstrates the feasibility of collaborative teaching. Furthermore, it is essential to meticulously develop a “hierarchical and progressive” practical capability cultivation system, which will contain competition incentive mechanism and project-based teaching approach. It enables students to be fully immersed in the entire process of conceiving, designing and implementing digital media technologies by selecting specific projects as learning carriers, thereby holistically enhancing their overall competencies and practical skills. Meanwhile, students are encouraged to extend their professional practice beyond the classroom by participating in various professional competitions and projects, enabling them to achieve a profound transition from theory to practice through continuous self-challenge, thereby cultivating digital media talents who possess both practical ability and innovative spirit.