University of Wisconsin La Crosse entrance sign . (Photo by: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
A sign on the University of Wisconsin La Crosse campus.
This month, University of Wisconsin (UW) regents approved Act 15, an overhaul to the state’s university system general education requirements proposed by the Wisconsin state legislature that educators warn could hurt academic freedom and hinder public education. Members of American Federation of Teachers (AFT)-Wisconsin told Workday Magazine that this new system will weaken campus autonomy, harm professors in less popular fields, and take power to shape curriculum.
Act 15 includes two main sections. The Teaching Workload Policy requires faculty and instructional academic staff to teach a minimum of 12 credits each academic year and three summer credits for those with 12-month appointments. The Core General Education Requirements (CGER) establishes a general education requirement with a maximum of six courses, or 36 credit hours, and establishes 10-12 new categories for all general education requirements to adhere to.
The CGER’s stated purpose is to standardize credit requirements across the UW campuses to support students who are transferring between institutions. Currently, general education requirements and curriculum categories differ across the 13 UW campuses.
However, union members say these sweeping changes were made by the legislature without input from educators. Critics warn that this could hurt departments that have lower enrollment, especially in the liberal arts. “Faculty at each campus have spent years developing distinctive general education programs that reflect local strengths and unique needs of our communities. Forcing campuses to adopt the same program undermines their autonomy, threatens smaller programs, and jeopardizes the diversity of ideas that enrich the UW system,” AFT-Wisconsin member Grace Deason from UW-La Crosse said in a statement released before the vote. “Wisconsin’s students and communities deserve a university system that values local expertise and shared governance, not top-down uniformity,” Deason added.
Act 15 is a Wisconsin legislature budget act that was then approved by the UW regents. According to the University of Wisconsin system, Act 15 must still be approved by UW President Jay Rothman by December 31, and is set to be implemented across campuses by September 1, 2026 for the start of the fall semester. The legislation allows the Board of Regents to submit a policy with guidelines for exceptions and course buyouts to the Joint Committee on Employment Relations (JCOER) by December 1.
Heather Walder is an assistant professor in anthropology at UW-La Crosse and secretary of United Academic Professionals of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UAPUWL), a labor union affiliated with AFT-Wisconsin Local 6502, who has worked in the UW system since 2013 and has taught many general education courses throughout the years. She called Act 15 a “one-size-fits-all” policy that “micromanages the labor of faculty across the UW system.”
“What they are asking all of the universities to do is redesign their gen-ed curriculum to fit a standardized model that has been developed not by teachers, not by educators, or content experts or professors, but by administrators and by legislators,” Walder says.
Ignacio Rivero Covelo is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University Wisconsin-Parkside and member of AFT-Wisconsin. Covelo explains that while departments like psychology that receive a lot of majors will be less impacted, he’s concerned for other departments, like philosophy, that don’t have the same level of popularity.
“What is more likely to happen is that once professors retire, they won’t hire replacements, and then, by attrition, those departments are going to disappear,” Covelo says. “The consequence is for students, they’re not being able to really get a true university education, because there is no university, just a collection of popular departments”.
Walder does not buy that this sort of large-scale system overhaul is necessary for the 2% of all students who transfer within the UW system. She calls the changes “absurd” and explains that processes like this should happen over years with faculty involvement, instead of by legislatures in a matter of months.
A recent statement from the UW Board of Regents states that the university’s administration “continue to engage and consult with shared governance in any system or campus level policies developed under this new Board policy.” The statement goes on to say, “Some exceptions and adjustments were made, including to address part-time instructional employees’ teaching workload requirements, accommodations for sabbaticals and leaves, and consideration of other duties and responsibilities.”
Many AFT-Wisconsin members are worried this could be part of a greater trend in Wisconsin politics to hinder public liberal arts education in the state, citing a 2023 ruling to tie university funding to the limitation of diversity equity and inclusion courses and initiatives on campus. Educators also cite the impact of Act 10 in 2011, which eliminated collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.
Act 10 was widely criticized by the labor movement as an attack on workers and in 2023, Wisconsin public employees filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a state law. An AFT-Wisconsin statement in 2023 alleges that Act 10 is “blatant discrimination that limits workers’ freedom to earn a fair wage, provide for their families, advocate for safety on the job and enjoy a secure retirement.”
Similar legislation limiting general education requirements was introduced in Iowa earlier this year, specifically targeting “identity politics” in required courses. The University of Nebraska, Omaha also implemented a policy limiting general education requirements credits by 12 credit hours in 2025, reportedly to retain student enrollment and support workforce development. While the different legislation is not equivalent, critics are concerned the impact on students may be similar.
“I’ve been a labor activist as long as I’ve been an employee of the UW system, and what I have seen over the last 15 plus years is continued dismantling of what was once one of the most thriving higher education public statewide systems in the country.” Walder goes on, “We’re giving up pieces of our academic freedom and our ability to determine our own labor.”
“What they’re doing is essentially limiting the options, and that’s really going to hurt our students,” says Walder. “I see this as an attempt to dismantle the liberal arts curriculum of universities, which we’ve seen across the country, attacks on academic freedom and courses that have content that could be challenged, courses that talk about the historical foundations of race in the United States, for example.”
Not only will these changes impact students, Walder also warns of the impacts on adjunct and other non-tenured faculty. “I was an adjunct or a lecturer for more than a decade, so I can speak to this directly. Those will be the people who lose their jobs first. So it’s absolutely going to affect the most precarious faculty members first” she says.
Covelo warns that this will narrow the worldview of students by limiting their options. “Students are going to have fewer options for courses.” He adds that robust general education requirements “Make students’ point of view more universal and not a narrow focus on whatever they think the main interest is.”
“We shouldn’t need to affirm which our faculty are in charge of curriculum, not administrators, and not the legislature. It’s very strange to me that a legislature can decide how the curriculum is developed.”
Both Covelo and Walder were involved in the efforts by AFT-Wisconsin to push back against the legislation, including a petition and urging staff senators to oppose the legislation and communicate to their regents their concerts. Ultimately, Act 15 was passed by the Board of Regents on November 19, leaving educators at the different campuses scrambling to retrofit curriculum to the new statewide mandates.
“At the most basic level universities should serve the students they have. Decisions about curriculum should be taken by the community that is in contact with the students and the faculty,” says Covelo. “The working conditions of professors are the educational conditions of their students. The worst conditions are for professors. The worst education is going to be for the students.”