AUSTIN—The University of Texas at Austin intends to implement its new core curriculum over the next two years, with some elements potentially coming online as early as the Spring 2027 semester.
UT-Austin President Jim Davis delivered the announcement at today’s UT System Board of Regents meeting.
“The existing core curriculum needs a wholesale change and we intend to do it,” Davis told regents.
The review began under Senate Bill 37, a 2025 state law that reformed several aspects of university governance.
As part of those changes, the new laws require 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.
Davis called general education “the most basic thing that we ought to do well” to produce an educated citizenry, and he acknowledged that the previous core had failed in this regard.
UT intends to “rebuild the core from the ground up,” Davis said.
The new core will have a series of requirements in arts and humanities, social sciences, and STEM.
Davis stated that courses under the new core would likely come online for the fall 2027 semester, though some might be ready sooner. He further elaborated that the fall of 2028 was “our aspiration” for full implementation.
The university’s most immediate challenge is to build capacity “to teach those classes across multiple sections.”
Courses that are removed from the core curriculum will become electives.
“If there’s demand for it, there will be a class,” Regent Chairman Kevin Eltife explained. “Supply and demand is going to determine the catalog at some point.”
A full report on the new core is available on the university’s website.
Davis’ presentation capped two days of public meetings.
Earlier on Thursday, regents passed a consent agenda that contained 88 out of 89 original items. Item 28, concerning the controversial tenure application of UT-Dallas history professor Rosemary Admiral, was deferred from the agenda.
Elsewhere on the consent agenda, regents certified compliance with House Bill 127, a 2025 research security law. Regents also approved the sale of a parcel of land through UT-Austin’s campus to TxDOT as part of the I-35 expansion project.
An amendment to the UT-Austin capital plan to begin “site preparation” for the development of the Dell Medical School in North Austin was also approved. A fuller discussion of the project is expected at the November meeting.
“The Good Lord blessed us,” Eltife stated to close the meeting.
The University of Texas System consists of nine academic institutions and four health care institutions. It is overseen by a Board of Regents that is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate. Kevin Eltife of Tyler is the current board chairman.
