China is issuing its first university degree program in all things matrimony, and its curriculum includes wedding planning, matchmaking services and marriage counseling.

The Beijing-based Vocational University of Civil Affairs is offering a four-year program in marriage services and management, which aims to teach students how to engage with “the entire cycle of marriage and family,” said the dean of the university’s School of Wedding Culture and Media Arts, Yu Xiaohui.

“It starts from before [a couple] starts a family — from marriage matchmaking, to premarital counseling, marriage registration, wedding services, and then extending down to counseling before divorce,” Yu told local media according to a Baidu translation, adding that there is currently a talent demand gap for highly trained professionals in the marriage services market.

Modules in the course include sociology, wedding venue design, family ethics, the economics of the marriage industry and family policies. Students will also have the chance to intern at agencies that specialize in weddings, matchmaking, marriage registration and counseling.

The program, which begins enrolling students this September, will recruit 70 undergraduates across 12 provinces in 2024, vice president of the university Zhao Honggang told local media. 

New marriages in China surged 12.4% in 2023 from the previous year, ending a nine-year streak of declines. However, more than half of the population between ages 25 to 29 remains unmarried, and late marriages have become more common in recent years.

The Vocational University of Civil Affairs is a newly established institution under China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs. Aside from its marriage management program, the school also offers degrees in smart health-care management, social work, rehabilitation assistive device technology and funeral management.

The Modern Funeral Management curriculum, which is also the country’s first undergraduate major in this field, aims to equip students with a variety of skills such as body embalming and preservation, palliative care and grief consolation, as well as body cremation and funeral equipment maintenance.

China is rapidly aging as a result of longer life expectancy and its “ultra-low” fertility rate. The number of births has declined in spite of the government’s efforts in the past decade to lift restrictions that had limited households to one child each.

The country has one of the fastest growing aging populations in the world — the country’s total population dropped by more than 2 million people to 1.41 billion in 2023 from the previous year.