HOUSTON—Regents of the University of Houston System approved a sweeping overhaul of the core curricula at its component institutions during their quarterly meeting on Thursday.
A new law, Senate Bill 37, reformed several aspects of university governance and served as the impetus for the changes. While the law focused on expanding the explicit authority of campus presidents and system boards of regents, as part of those changes it requires governing boards of taxpayer-subsidized university systems to conduct a review of all general education curricula every five years.
General education requirements are a set of courses all students must complete, regardless of major. Higher education authors Jason Brennan and Phil Magness have criticized these mandates as a subsidy for economically unsustainable programs that frequently protect woke curricula from accountability.
The changes, covering 24 pages of the 68-page meeting agenda, require institutions to ensure that every core course meets four statutory criteria: foundational to postsecondary education, necessary for civic and professional life, supportive of workforce and societal participation, and contributory to breadth of knowledge expected in accredited programs.
All four criteria must be satisfied for a course to qualify as core.
To operationalize these criteria, UH introduced a set of foundational component areas: communication, mathematics, life and physical sciences, American history, government/political science, social and behavioral sciences, language/philosophy/culture, creative arts, and two UH‑specific options, math/reasoning and writing in the disciplines.
UH also integrates the Texas Core Curriculum’s required core objectives, such as critical thinking, communication skills, empirical and quantitative skills, teamwork, social responsibility, and personal responsibility.
Following the conceptual framework, the agenda provided extensive proposed core course lists for the University of Houston, UH‑Clear Lake, and UH‑Downtown.
Course titles were generally nondescript, although U.S. history courses on “African-American,” “Chicano,” and “Women’s” history could serve as a vehicle for left-wing content.
General Counsel Dona Cornell told regents that for UH’s main campus, the core was being reduced from 280 to 147 eligible classes. UH-Downtown and UH-Clear Lake saw smaller reductions.
Regents approved the changes without discussion.
In addition, regents approved a series of changes to the faculty council bylaws for each UH institution. SB 37 prohibits faculty councils from policymaking activity, but permits them as “advisory only” bodies subordinate to the campus president.
The changes codify the councils’ scope as formalized compliance and review entities, responsible for ensuring that departmental and college-level decisions conform to systemwide policy and legislative mandates.
Each campus council—UH, UH‑Clear Lake, and UH‑Downtown—must now maintain documented procedures for curriculum review, faculty evaluation, and grievance handling, subject to annual certification by the chancellor’s office.
The revisions also standardize membership composition and election procedures, replacing locally determined structures with systemwide criteria.
The revisions also introduce new reporting and transparency requirements.
Regents approved these changes without discussion.
A handful of faculty members expressed opposition to each of these items during public testimony.
Regents also certified compliance with House Bill 127, a 2025 state law that protects research security, and Senate Bill 17, a 2023 law that prohibits DEI in many aspects of day-to-day university governance.
Earlier in the day, the Audit and Finance Committee heard a brief presentation on the UH system’s campus carry policy. The current policy will remain unchanged, except for a few revisions due to construction.
Finally, regents re-elected their current officers for fiscal year 2027.
The University of Houston System consists of three academic institutions. It is overseen by a Board of Regents that is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate. Jack Moore of Houston is the current board chair.
