UT Austin overhauling core classes but hasn’t detailed how new center relates to the courses
By Jessica Priest, The Texas Tribune
August 13, 2026
Future UT-Austin students would have fewer classes to choose from to meet graduation requirements under a proposal university leaders presented Thursday.
The plan to remake the flagship campus’ core curriculum replaces the sprawling menu of classes students can now take to meet core requirements with a more structured core curriculum organized around the humanities, social sciences and science, technology, engineering and math.
But how the overhaul connects to UT-Austin’s new Center for the Humanities remains unclear.
A report from a 22-member faculty task force appointed by UT-Austin President Jim Davis proposes 12 requirements across the core areas, compared with the current 10.
Davis described the existing core to the University of Texas System regents as a “haphazard grab bag of classes,” pointing to a course on the history of college football as an example of a specialized class that may be a worthwhile elective but, in his view, should not to fulfill half of a student’s U.S. history requirement.
UT students would have to take courses focused on Western civilization, great questions of human life, the principles of American politics, world politics and cultures, great ideas in science and computer science and artificial intelligence, according to the proposal.
Recommendations include creating a “Texas 40: Great Thinkers” list for courses on great questions of human life and three separate 40-author lists for British, American and world literature courses. Great questions courses would have to draw at least two-thirds of their content from the thinkers list.
Faculty members would have a chance to shape their own courses with their creativity and expertise, one of the taskforce members, Richard Reddick, told The Texas Tribune.
“Academic freedom is a big piece of this,” Reddick said. “I can’t imagine telling our faculty colleagues, ‘Here’s your syllabus, teach this.’ It’s not going to work.”
The task force recommends students complete four of the proposed requirements at UT-Austin, rather than accepting transfer or dual-credit coursework from elsewhere. That would include the great questions of human life, principles of American politics, great ideas in science, and computer science and artificial intelligence.
The new requirements would take 36 credit hours, down from the current 42. That would leave students six additional hours for electives, courses in their major or other classes.
Under the proposal, specialized classes not selected for the new core would remain available as electives, but university leaders acknowledged their future could depend on whether enough students enroll.
The taskforce also recommended UT-Austin offer a small-class option for every core requirement over time, prioritize in-person teaching and limit fully online core classes.
University officials plan to begin offering new courses in fall 2027 and make the redesigned core mandatory for a new incoming class in fall 2028. The taskforce has not yet identified which courses would qualify. Its report recommends three faculty-led committees decide what proposals meet the new standards.
Earlier in the meeting, three UT-Austin students criticized Davis and regents for what they described as a lack of transparency and meaningful student and faculty input into recent academic changes.
They pointed to the consolidation of gender and ethnic studies; plans to move biology operations to make room for the School of Civic Leadership; and the closure of the Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy Library.
“You have shown how little you regard the wants and needs of students, staff and professors by bulldozing prominent institutions without allowing feedback from the people they affect the most,” said Elise James, a government major who is a member of the Students for a Democratic Society.
University officials said the review included student input. Reddick, a professor of higher education leadership and policy in the College of Education, and Kristin Patterson, an associate professor of instruction in biology and undergraduate studies in the College of Natural Science, served on the core-curriculum task force.
Patterson and Reddick told the Tribune that the group met weekly for an hour and a half and heard from students and faculty across campus as well as from outside experts. Students generally praised the classes they had taken but found the current core difficult to navigate, the professors said.
Under the proposal, each requirement could be fulfilled by multiple courses, and faculty members from all departments would be invited to develop them.
UT-Austin officials are reviewing the courses all undergraduates must take after a 2025 state law required public university governing boards to certify that those courses prepare students for civic and professional life and support workforce preparation.
The law also requires boards to consider the courses’ potential cost and effect on students’ time to degree. The boards must complete their first review by Jan. 1 and repeat it at least once every five years.
The regents did not vote on UT-Austin’s proposed changes. Davis said he would return to the board for approval as officials develop and staff the new courses.
Last week, the Texas State University System regents were the first to act under the new law, approving revised core-course lists for its seven institutions. At Texas State University in San Marcos, the review changed the learning outcomes for 115 courses to focus on what students should be able to do after taking them — rather than particular attitudes, beliefs or values — and removed eight Honors courses that were no longer taught.
The law did more than require universities to review their core curriculums. At UT-Austin, it also replaced the Faculty Council, an elected body that advised university leaders on curriculum and other matters, with faculty advisory groups appointed by the president, including the core-curriculum task force.
But the push to reshape what UT-Austin students learn predates last year’s law.
Republican state leaders have long argued that Texas’ public universities are too liberal or too focused on ideas that do not prepare students for careers.
In 2021, lawmakers gave UT-Austin $6 million to create the Civitas Institute, a think tank focused on individual liberty, limited government, private enterprise and free markets. Two years later, UT regents created the School of Civic Leadership to house the institute before lawmakers could vote on a bill that would have required the university to do so.
The school and the institute had or were set to have 42 tenured or tenure-track faculty members as of Aug. 3, according to records obtained by the Tribune, nearly triple the 15 positions lawmakers proposed requiring. Its major, Civics Honors, enrolled 103 students when it began last fall.
As UT-Austin built up the School of Civic Leadership, it accelerated plans to consolidate seven College of Liberal Arts departments, including African and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, Mexican American and Latino Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, into two new departments by fall 2026.
Davis said the restructuring followed a review that found wide disparities in student-to-faculty ratios across the college.
Lauren Gutterman, whose appointment as chair of American Studies ends Saturday, said she expects to become an associate professor in the new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.
Gutterman said she was not aware of any faculty members in the consolidated units losing their jobs, though she added that some staff members were fired or reassigned. She worries university leaders will not replace professors who leave, retire or receive outside offers.
“They’re not going to kind of fire us wholesale, but find ways of chipping away at the faculty within these units,” Gutterman said.
Meanwhile, Davis and university leaders have said little publicly about the Center for Humanities, whose website notes it will focus on teaching and research tied to the core curriculum.
Davis did not answer questions after the regents’ meeting. UT spokesperson Mike Rosen did not respond to questions about who created, approved or funded the center or how it will fit alongside the existing Humanities Institute, which was established in 2001 to support humanities research.
The Austin American-Statesman first reported the center this month. The center’s website was created July 8, according to its underlying code. Eight of the 11 faculty members listed on the website work at the Civitas Institute while five previously worked at the University of Florida’s Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education, a state-backed program that later became a college. Neither Center for Humanities Director Robert Ingram nor Humanities Institute Director Tanya Clement responded to a request for comment.
Patterson and Reddick said the core-curriculum task force’s work is complete. They did not know about the Center for Humanities or what role, if any, it will play in the core-curriculum overhaul, the professors said. The task force’s written report lists both Ingram and Jill Ingram, a professor of humanities at the Center, as members.
Before the 2025 law, a major academic initiative — such as a new center — would generally have been developed with faculty input and presented to the Faculty Council for discussion and a vote before moving to university leaders and regents, said Liliana Garces, a professor in the UT-Austin’s College of Education.
“I was very surprised, to say the least, to learn about the center from a news article,” Garces said.
At Thursday’s meeting, regents praised Davis’ core-curriculum proposal and his leadership.
Board Chair Kevin P. Eltife said UT-Austin had “lacked that in the past.” Board Vice Chair Janiece Longoria said Davis was “proving that we’re capable of doing hard things” by replacing a core that had grown “like an amoeba, way out of control.”
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This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.