UT ends Flag courses requirements, including diversity; plans new model. Here's why.

The University of Texas volition extremity its Flags programme effectual immediately, eliminating its graduation requirements for taste diversity, planetary cultures, ethics, quantitative reasoning, autarkic enquiry and penning courses, the assemblage announced Monday.

Interim President Jim Davis and recently appointed Provost David Vanden Bout authorized retiring the programme aft reviewing the preliminary results of a Flags Review Committee, which drew from information and faculty, pupil and leader perspectives. It affirmed the worth of the Flags programme and its intent but recommended reforming it to amended align graduation requirements with programme outcomes, regularly reappraisal skills for existent vocation and satellite preparedness, instrumentality an alternate administrative model, and amended pass the worth of these skills.

On its website, UT says its Flag programme prepares students "to pass effectively, prosecute successful ethical decision-making and autarkic problem-solving, and recognize the diverse, data-dense world."

In an exclusive interrogation with the American-Statesman connected Monday, Art Markman, elder vice provost for world affairs, said UT volition motorboat a caller skills-based attack called a Comprehensive Learner Record task successful autumn 2026. It volition instrumentality 36 skills from six categories, arsenic determined by some academics and employers, and "infuse" them into its curriculum. Without the Flag requirements, students volition person much bureau implicit which skills to acquire, helium said.

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UT's determination to destruct its Flags programme comes astatine a clip erstwhile lawmakers are considering bills to barroom diversity-related halfway requirements and are pressuring universities to comply with the "spirit" of Senate Bill 17, a 2023 authorities instrumentality that banned diversity, equity and inclusion successful hiring, enactment offices and programs astatine each nationalist universities and colleges. The law, which went into effect Jan. 1, 2024, explicitly exempted DEI successful world courses and research.

Republican lawmakers who are pushing bills to extremity diverseness requirements accidental their proposals volition forestall "indoctrination" and amended hole students for the workforce. Opponents of the proposals, however, accidental they volition invitation authorities censorship into higher acquisition and harm students.

Markman said the Comprehensive Learner Record has been successful the works for years, and the timing of its rollout arsenic lawmakers are weighing program bills was "unfortunate" but not related.

"The Comprehensive Learner Record attack is the close mode to guarantee that our students are maximizing their worth of a assemblage education," Markman said. "Even if it leads to immoderate perceptions that it's being done successful a reactive way, what we're doing is really precise proactive and thing that we deliberation is going to beryllium an tremendous payment to our students."

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The authorities has its ain halfway program requirements, but Flags were created astir 20 years agone to hole each UT graduates with skills that are invaluable for civic and nonrecreational life. Former UT President Jay Hartzell announced that the assemblage initiated a reappraisal of its Flag programme to lawmakers during an interim Senate Higher Education subcommittee proceeding successful November, saying UT would guarantee the halfway requirements were timely and did not impede with graduation rates.

At a UT Faculty Council gathering successful March, immoderate module members asked the Flags Review Committee's seat pointed questions astir the request for an expedited reappraisal of the programme and wherefore the assemblage was targeting skills and acquisition alternatively of pushing for producing knowledge.

'Helping to alteration a assemblage education'

The Comprehensive Learner Record seeks to simplify program and streamline paths to graduation by allowing students to see what skills to larn that volition straight impact their aboriginal careers without subjecting them to assemblage requirements, administrators said.

Markman said UT is piloting the caller task present — by connecting skills that are already being taught to grounds that students are acquiring them — to amended pass the worth of specified acquisition to the nationalist and employers.

"This is truly thing that we spot arsenic helping to alteration a assemblage education, and truthful we're precise excited astir this approach," helium said. "At a clip erstwhile we cognize that determination is increasing interest and sometimes adjacent mistrust astir the worth of a assemblage education, it's important for universities to measurement up and truly show the captious worth of a four-year assemblage education."

The university's determination to extremity the Flags programme was announced Monday due to the fact that it's the archetypal time of autumn people registration, Markman said.

The six categories successful the caller programme are communication; quantitative and empirical research; planetary consciousness and societal awareness; creativity and innovation; leadership, morals and collaboration; and captious reasoning and occupation solving. The 36 skills derived from these categories that volition beryllium infused into the school's program volition alteration implicit time, however, to align with changing workforce needs, Markman said.

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He said the assemblage values taste diverseness and planetary cultures and its narration to the workforce, but the displacement volition let students to determine for themselves to instrumentality specified courses.

"The assemblage continues to judge that an knowing of the world, an knowing of the planetary marketplace, and planetary nine is important for the occurrence of our students," Markman said. "We admit that this is highly important but truly privation to marque definite that it is infused done the program successful a mode wherever students are alert of the skills that they're processing and the worth of those skills."

At a Senate Finance Committee gathering Feb. 6, Sen. Brandon Creighton, a Republican from Conroe who chairs the Senate Education Committee, asked Hartzell, the school's erstwhile president who was UT's main astatine the time, astir the "likelihood" of assemblage flags being eliminated.

For "courses that person precise fewer students applying and they don't person an equivalent worth successful the workforce, and is that what the University of Texas chooses to connection oregon should offer?" Creighton asked.

At that hearing, Creighton touted decisions by the University of North Texas removing mentions of diverseness from its program and Texas A&M University eliminating its LGBTQ insignificant and 51 different minors and certificates for debased enrollment arsenic complying with the "spirit" of SB 17.

This nonfiction primitively appeared connected Austin American-Statesman: University of Texas ends emblem courses requirement, including diversity