The University removed the Skills and Experience Flag courses as a graduation requirement on April 7, leaving students with questions and confusion on the future of their curriculum and class requirements.
The University removed the requirement due to two reasons, according to Art Markman, senior vice provost for academic affairs. The first reason was to simplify the “curriculum by removing potential barriers to graduation,” and the second was to recognize career-level skills in the curriculum and that the University should focus on students having a “record of how their expertise builds across their program of study.” The removal and a new “Comprehensive Learner’s Record” requirement set to begin in the fall semester of 2026 left some students confused.
The Skills and Experience Flags were a set of requirements students needed to graduate, which mandated students to take at least one course that meets each of the six flags, including writing, ethics, cultural diversity in the United States, global cultures, quantitative reasoning and independent inquiry.
Is there a new system being implemented?
Although still in development, the “Comprehensive Learner’s Record” plans to have six competencies, titled “Communication,” “Quantitative and Empirical Research,” “Global Awareness and Social Engagement,” “Creativity and Innovation,” “Leadership, Ethics and Collaboration” and “Critical Thinking and Problem Solving.”
“Starting in the fall of ‘26, every class will identify at least one of the underlying competencies that is being taught in the class, and there will be at least one assignment, or exam or other assessment in the class that will provide you, as a student, with evidence that you achieve that skill, and the record itself will be the accumulation of all of these things where you have demonstrated that you have achieved that competence,” said Markman.
Unlike the flag requirements, the six competencies or skills are not required to graduate, Markman said. Markman said the purpose of the updated system is to give future employers a better idea of a student’s skills and abilities from the classes they took.
“We’re going to be also rolling out a lot of other tools to help you (students) think about what skills you might want to take,” Markman said. “For example, we are going to be identifying the kinds of skills that particular types of employers are looking for when they’re hiring, so that you can look at the match between your expertise and the expertise that those employers are looking for.”
Although flag credits will not transfer over to the new Comprehensive Learner’s Record directly, Markman said the University is discussing mechanisms to go back through classes and assign competencies appropriately to give current students a record of their past courses taken.
The University is testing out an artificial intelligence system that assigns competencies to classes based on their syllabus and curriculum, even if the professor is no longer at the University by the time of its implementation.
“I am hopeful that as this system rolls out, it helps students to justify why they’re pursuing a particular major, knowing that major is going to lead to expertise that is going to benefit them in the career choices that they make later,” Markman said.
Markman said no University staff from the flag office will be laid off due to the system’s removal, but they will be primarily transferred over to maintain the new Comprehensive Learner’s Record.
What do students think of the flags’ removal?
Markman said making the new Comprehensive Learner’s Record optional responded to student criticism of the previously required Skills and Experience Flag courses, which he said students had difficulty with or lacked interest in.
“There were times where students would take a particular course, they think, ‘I’m really not sure why I’m taking this, what am I learning from this?’” Markman said. “By having every class articulate at least one of the competencies, maybe more, it gives you a clearer sense of, ‘Yeah, this is important to me. This is why I am in the class.’”
Computer science freshman Mohammed Asad said he completed a lot of his core curriculum requirements before arriving at college, so he would have had to go out of his way to take any non-STEM-related flag courses. He said students complained that they could not get much out of the flag classes unrelated to their majors.
“For many STEM majors, of the many people I’ve talked to, everybody is super, super happy about those flags being taken away,” Asad said. “Nobody that I know was getting something out of them, nobody that I know was enjoying taking them, and just about everybody I know was taking them just because they had to fulfill the degree.”
However, government freshman Lillian Patterson believed the required flags provided benefits, like encouraging students to gain more general knowledge outside of their major.
“Getting rid of the well-roundedness will not be as good for specifically STEM majors,” Patterson said.
Economics junior Daniel Simbeck said he would not be graduating on track if the flag requirements had not been removed as a requirement.
“There’s other classes that are more particular to a person’s preferences,” Simbeck said. “If they are very general, I think they are good.”
Editor’s Note: The second paragraph of this article has been updated to elaborate on the requirement change.
