UW-Madison removes ethnic studies requirement for incoming students

The University of Wisconsin-Madison altered their general education requirements in May for incoming students first enrolling for or after Summer 2026, completely removing the current ethnic studies requirement but retaining the courses under a new category.

The new requirements replace the current 11 categories —  ethnic studies, humanities, literature, biological, natural, physical and social sciences, Communication A and B and Quantitative Reasoning A and B — with seven categories: civics and perspectives, communication and literacy, humanities and arts, math and quantitative reasoning, natural science and wellness, natural science and wellness with lab and social and behavioral science. The new categories are now called Core GenEd instead of the former Course Designation. 

The new categories mirror the categories in the Board of Regents’s controversial Act 15 General Education Core Requirements, passed Nov. 19, which apply to all students in all schools across the University of Wisconsin System. The act is an effort to make general education courses transferable between UW System schools, easing students’ ability to transfer. 

The policy will “standardize the curricular categories already in place across UW universities, and align with the recent revisions by the Wisconsin Technical College System,” according to a summary of the requirements at the Nov. 19 Board of Regents meeting. 

At least seven of the 13 UW System Faculty Senate bodies objected to the new general education requirements, saying the process was “rushed, lacked enough faculty input and went beyond what state law required by proposing a new 36-credit framework with six areas of study,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Universities cannot add additional general education courses outside of the six categories, and any course that counts as a categorical general education requirement at one university must transfer to another university in the same category.

UW-Madison previously said they had no plans to change their ethnic studies requirement, which is not a system-wide requirement, though an FAQ on a Board of Regents page sparked student concerns in early October. The FAQ page’s question on ethnic studies has since been updated to read, “The Universities of Wisconsin through the Board of Regents do not require ethnic studies or cultural diversity courses. Individual universities currently have discretion in this area and that autonomy is not subject to change.”

Now, while almost all of the courses listed under the ethnic studies requirement match those under the  civics and perspectives Core GenEd, the ethnic studies requirement will no longer exist for newly enrolling students. 

A UW-Madison civics and perspectives course “examines the experiences and contributions of persistently marginalized racial or ethnic groups in the U.S. to foster informed, constructive engagement in a diverse society,” according to the UW-Madison course requirements page. 

The ethnic studies requirement also said students should learn to “articulate how the past has affected present day circumstances regarding race and racial inequities in the U.S., recognize and question cultural assumptions and knowledge claims as they relate to race and ethnicity, [and] demonstrate self-awareness and empathy toward the cultural perspectives and worldviews of others.”

For students to meet UW-Madison’s Core GenEd requirements, they must earn 30 credits total from 10 courses across the seven categories. Each course has only one associated category, rather than the current system, where courses could fall under multiple Course Designations if they were associated with more than one category: were a student to transfer schools, their general education credits would transfer under that same category. 

Other state universities have also centralized their general education requirements, though faculty have protested, saying the categories limit university autonomy to design their own requirements and cater to different student bodies. 

For example, UW-Eau Claire will update their liberal education requirements, including categories of Creativity, Integration and Community-Engaged Learning. UW-Oshkosh updated their Quest Sequence and Explore requirements, which previously included an ethnic studies requirement, to meet the general education categories. In each case, similar courses are listed, but under the new categories.

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