BEIJING -- China's Ministry of Education has released a guideline requiring higher-education institutions to provide students with more opportunities and better aesthetic courses, the ministry said Thursday.

Higher education institutions are expected to have made a breakthrough in aesthetic education by 2022, with better teaching staff and facilities, and remarkable results achieved in aesthetic education reform, according to the guideline.

A diversified and high-quality aesthetic education system featuring socialism with Chinese characteristics should have been established by 2035.

The document asked higher education institutions to set up special agencies tasked with popularizing aesthetic education, with students being required to obtain aesthetic credits from the institutions in order to graduate.

It also stressed the need for special aesthetic education institutions to innovate their way of fostering talent for arts while the evaluation criteria for such talent should be improved.