Starting this fall, West Virginia University students will need fewer credits to graduate.
In an effort to encourage degree completion, the university is changing its general education requirements for all students by cutting between four and 12 credit hours worth of study, depending on the major.
Students will take between 31 and 37 credits when the requirement goes into affect at the start of the 2016-2017 academic year. General education study currently requires 41 to 43 hours.
The changes affect each WVU campus, including Potomac State College and the Institute of Technology.
University officials say the change will help students better meet a 120 credit hour graduation benchmark on time. Before the change, several majors required students to have 128 hours.
Because each major has slightly different general education requirements, some students could have as much as an entire semester's worth of study removed from their course schedule.
The university's current general education requirements have changed little in the last 10 years. They've been in place since 2005.
They'll now be aligned with essential learning outcomes created by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Those outcomes include students learning about human culture and the natural world while developing intellectual and practical skills, learning personal and social responsibility and applying what they learn to address complex problems.
General education classes currently are being aligned with those goals. Changes will be complete by the end of the fall 2017 semester.
In addition to reducing the number of hours needed to graduate, major changes include eliminating a university-wide writing requirement. Communications classes will now be assigned based on skills students will need in their specific program.
General education classes also will be categorized in seven areas: English; science and technology; mathematics and quantitative skills; society and connections; human inquiry and the past; artistic expression; and global and diversity studies. There also will be an eighth focus area that can count toward a minor.
As part of the changes, the university's general education curriculum will now be called general education foundation. The changes were approved by the faculty senate in 2014.
Reach Samuel Speciale at sam.speciale@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-7939 or follow @samueljspeciale on Twitter.