The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents on Thursday certified a core-curriculum review required by state law, removing dozens of courses from the general-education lists that every undergraduate must finish, regardless of major.
Most of the cuts are ordinary catalog classes. The largest share is at the College Station campus. Mixed in are courses critics call political, including Climate Change, Feminist Science, Tech, and Medicine, Introduction to Latinx Literary Studies, LGBTQ Literatures, Aesthetics of Activism, Sociology of Deviance, Gender and Health, Multicultural Education, Diversity in Sports Organizations, Sociology of Minorities, and Race and Ethnic Relations.
The review was required by Senate Bill 37, the 2025 law that rebuilt university governance. Boards of taxpayer-funded systems must audit general-education curricula every five years and keep only courses that are foundational. Supplemental materials on the item ran 63 pages in the 357-page agenda book.
Classes pulled from the core can still be offered as electives in many cases. They simply no longer count toward the required core. System officials have described the lists as bloated. The University of Houston System made a similar core cut last month.
The same meeting included tenure awards and a separate plan to drop “low-performing” degree programs at campuses outside College Station. One tenure file drew notice: Dr. Joseph Cooper, author of Black Sporting Resistance, a book framed around racial-justice activism in sport. An official A&M account has called him a scholar of “sport, education, race, and culture.”
The A&M System has 12 academic institutions and eight state agencies. Gov. Greg Abbott appoints the board, subject to Senate confirmation. Robert Albritton of Fort Worth is chairman.