Marx No Longer Makes the Grade at People’s University of China

BEIJING — The People’s University of China, one of the country’s most prestigious schools, is dropping Marx in favor of marketing and management, the official Business Weekly newspaper said Sunday.

The university is scrapping traditional classes such as Scientific Socialism, the Basics of Marxism and the International Communist Movement, it said.

In their place come Management in Real Estate, International Business Management, Taxation and Marketing.

In all, 17 outdated and heavily ideological specialties will be dropped.

“Some specialties have been canceled because young people are reluctant to apply and graduates have had a hard time finding jobs,” the newspaper said.

Under China’s push for capitalist-style market economic reforms, the Planned Economy Department has changed into the National Economic Management Department.

Even the Department of the History of the Chinese Communist Party may turn into simply the Department of Political Science if students have their way, the newspaper said.

Late last year China’s Communist Party School, a bastion of Marxist ideological purity in the maelstrom of capitalist reforms, opened its gates ever so slightly with a course on the stock market.