U. Houston Slashes 40 Percent of Courses From Core Curriculum

U. Houston Slashes 40 Percent of Courses From Core Curriculum

There is a lot of this going around right now.

Higher Ed Dive reports:

University of Houston slashes 40% of courses from its core curriculum

The core revamp purges a large number of courses students can take to satisfy the general education requirements of their undergraduate degrees.

At Thursday’s board meeting, the changes came under fire from some faculty members, who argued that administrators had a heavy hand in the curriculum review process and that the cuts could negatively impact undergraduate education at UH.

Among them was Richard Armstrong, a UH professor and director of the flagship’s classical studies program, who said that the overhaul eliminated five out of his department’s six core-eligible courses without explanation.

“I have no idea why the one was kept and the others were cut out,” Armstrong said. As an example, he pointed to a popular class about heroes in Greek and Roman mythology that was nixed from the core. Armstrong urged for more faculty involvement in the core curriculum redesign.

However, Dona Cornell, the system’s general counsel, said faculty and academic leadership had been consulted during the review process. She added that some courses were removed as core options because they had low enrollment or were no longer being offered.

Cornell affirmed to the board that the new course list complies with SB 37. She added that courses dropped from the core will continue to be offered, and that a process exists for departments to request a course added back to the core.

The system board also cut core curriculum offerings for its other two institutions, though less dramatically. The number of University of Houston Downtown’s classes eligible as core courses dropped from 98 to 87, while the University of Houston Clear Lake lost just one, according to Cornell.

Passed last year, SB 37 is reshaping core curriculum across the state’s public institutions. Earlier this month, the University of Texas at Austin announced a massive overhaul to its core curriculum framework.

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