Texas A&M System Removes Hundreds of Courses From Core Curriculum

TEXAS -- The Texas A&M University System shared a press release announcing changes on September 3. Texas college students have a lot of required classes to get through, and hundreds of courses in the Texas A&M System are about to stop counting toward one of the biggest chunks of those requirements.

But there's an important catch: the classes themselves aren't necessarily going away.

So What Is Texas A&M Actually Changing?

Basically, a class can still be offered without counting toward those 42 hours of core classes Texas college students generally have to complete. Across the A&M System, regents removed 350 course listings from the core, added 26, and kept 1,254. Some classes appear more than once in the listings, so we're not talking about exactly 350 individual classes disappearing from students' options.

What Courses Are Losing Their Core Status at Texas A&M?

The review comes after Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 37, which requires university governing boards to take a closer look at the classes included in their core curriculum.

And some of the choices are already getting attention.

Courses involving subjects including climate change, LGBTQ literature, and ethnic studies are among those losing core status at schools within the A&M System, although exactly what's changing depends on the university.

The simplest way to think about it, perhaps? Well, some of these classes may still be available. They just won't necessarily help students check one of those required core boxes anymore.

And if you've ever tried to piece together a college schedule while making sure every credit actually counts toward something, you know that's not exactly a minor detail.

Read More: 5 Texas Jobs That Can Pay $100K Without a Degree