New General Education Requirements Coming to UWSP.

In compliance with Act 15, the Universities of Wisconsin system is implementing new general education requirements affective September 1, 2026.  

Act 15, passed the Wisconsin State Legislature on July 3, 2025. The biennial budget requires that Universities of Wisconsin schools accept each other’s general education requirements to ease transferability.

This new program is referred to as the Core General Education Requirements, or CGER.   

The CGER consists of six categories that must add up to 30-36 credits: Mathematics and Quantitative Reasoning, Communication and Literacy, Social and Behavioral Science, Humanities and Arts, Natural Sciences and Wellness, and Civics and Perspectives.  

Each university determines what classes will fall under each category and can add subdivisions to the categories.  

“That flexibility was given to the individual institutions, and I think that’s important,” said Todd Huspeni, associate vice chancellor for teaching, learning, and strategic planning. “We tried really hard to make the new core very, very similar in requirements and credit counts and categories to our existing general education program.” 

Currently enrolled students will be largely unaffected by this change. The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point holds each student to the requirements under which they first enrolled, though students may choose to adhere to the CGER instead.  

“Students are always entitled in their academic program to move to a more recent… version of catalog requirements,” Huspeni said.  

Each university maintains independence in granting credit for Advanced Placement scores or technical college coursework. However, if one UW school grants CGER credit for such programs, the other universities must honor the original school’s decision.  

The Sept. 1 deadline is placing pressure on UW schools. “What would normally take our campus a year…we are trying to do in a matter of a couple of months,” said John Gaffney, UW Stevens Point’s school registrar.  

The Office of the Registrar manages courses, registration and graduation processes that keep the university running and has handled much of the implementation work.  

“The work that all of these people have done and will continue to do in order to make this happen by September is a heavy lift,” said Huspeni, acknowledging the hard work of all involved in the process.  

Despite the short timeline, Huspeni said the CGER should improve the Universities of Wisconsin system. “I think the transparency and the effect on transfer is going to be much improved for new students,” said Huspeni.  

Emily Koniar

Contributor

ekoni601@uwsp.edu