The University of Houston has cut 133 classes from its list of core curriculum after conducting a review mandated by Senate Bill 37, which Texas lawmakers passed in June 2025 and went into effect in September 2025.
Many of the removed courses will still be offered for students, university leaders said Aug. 20. However, some professors and students expressed concern about the future of courses cut from the core list.
How we got here
On Aug. 20, UH’s board of regents unanimously approved a list of 147 courses for the university’s core curriculum for the 2026-27 school year. In the 2025-26 school year, UH offered 280 courses under its core curriculum.
Under SB 37, governing boards of higher education institutions must review their core curriculum lists every five years, with the first review due by Jan. 1, 2027, according to the bill posted on the Texas Legislature’s website.
Core curriculum refers to 42 credit hours that are required for all Texas undergraduate students, according to UH’s website. To receive a bachelor’s degree, students must complete specific numbers of credit hours for the subject areas of:
- Communication
- Mathematics
- Life and physical science
- Language, philosophy and culture
- Creative arts
- American history
- Government/political science
- Social and behavioral sciences
- Mathematics/reasoning
- Writing in the disciplines
The core curriculum list offers undergraduate students specific course options to fulfill the required 42 credit hours of core courses needed for their bachelor’s degree, according to UH’s website.
What happened?
Some courses were removed from UH’s 2026-27 list of core curriculum due to low enrollment or since they were no longer being offered, said Dona Cornell, UH’s vice chancellor for legal affairs and general counsel, during the Aug. 20 meeting.
A team of faculty reviewed UH’s core curriculum list in June and early July before passing it to administrators, Cornell said.
Some of the courses offered on the 2025-26 core curriculum list that are not included on the 2026-27 list include:
- Human biology for the informed citizen
- Introduction to oceanography
- Principles of drug addiction
- Black liberation theology
- Modern & rationalism in Islamic tradition
- The Bible and pop culture
- Introduction to LGBT studies
- Introduction to women’s studies
- Greek & Roman myths of heroes
- Studies in non-fiction writing
- Shakespeare-major works
- Impact of modern technology on society
- Introduction to Asian American studies
- Introduction to C++ programming
- Tourism
To view the 2026-27 list of core curriculum, click here. To view the 2025-26 list of core curriculum, click here.
The discussion
During the Aug. 20 board of regents meeting, Ian Kariuki, a UH student and the student body vice president, expressed concern about enrollment being impacted for classes cut from the core curriculum list.
“We take it from the core now, but as a student, if I see that class is not aligning with my major or my minor, I'm going to be less likely to join those classes,” Kariuki said. “So meaning less participation, which means in the future we're going to get rid of those classes.”
On Aug. 20, Richard Armstrong, director of classical studies at UH, said educators should have been more involved in the process of reviewing which core courses to cut.
“Curriculum needs reviewing, I certainly don't deny that, but this is supposed to be a conversation among educators. ... The problem is it doesn't look like, from our point of view, there's much thought involved here, particularly when we look at the practical consequences of cutting 40% of the classes from core,” Armstrong said.
Some context
UH officials have been working on updating its list of core curriculum even prior to the SB 37-mandated review, a university spokesperson said via email Aug. 27. The remaining 241 courses were then considered under the SB 37 review.
