Name change — hype or future-oriented prescience?

Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology has recently renamed the information engineering department of its artificial intelligence school the metaverse engineering department. This is the first university department named after the metaverse in the country.

The concept of the metaverse has been controversial since its emergence, and people have enough reasons to question what subjects the department will teach, and what jobs its graduates will be suitable for. The university, which has the autonomy to name its departments and schools, can answer these questions with its actions.

In recent years, some Chinese universities have changed the names of their departments and schools, say, from the department of mechanics to the department of intelligence, just to make them sound better. As a matter of fact, the education and research of these departments with fashionable names are no different from before.