Students are subject to the regulations in the Bulletin in effect at the time they enter VCU, so students enrolled before Fall 2021 will continue to be required to complete the previous general education requirements. If students choose to transfer to a newer bulletin, then the newer rules would apply. Students should discuss their questions with their academic adviser.

A course may not count as both a general education course and as a core course in a major. A core course in a major is one that is required for all students enrolled in the major, regardless of the particular track or concentration within the major they have chosen to complete. SCHEV requires that all students within a particular major have at least 25% of their major requirements (excluding general education) comprised of core major courses.

No. The new GenEd program is designed to be portable, so that if a student changes majors they will not be required to take additional GenEd courses. Changing majors may, however, require a student to take additional courses if those added courses are required as prerequisites for upper-division courses in the major.

Dual enrollment courses, courses taken at other colleges and transferred into VCU, and AP/IB/CLEP credits will continue to count for GedEd and other course requirements, as specified by the course articulation tables. Visit the Transfer Center website for more information.

No. Each course will be aligned with a single Area of Inquiry, although its content may link to multiple areas and skills.

ConnectED will be adding a racial literacy requirement to the general education curriculum, beginning in the 2023-24 academic year.

Courses that fulfill the racial literacy requirement will ask students to identify, engage, and contextualize ongoing structures of racialized power and privilege. These courses will introduce the social construction of race and racism as political, social, and cultural inventions.

The introduction of the racial literacy requirement will add 3 credits to the Foundations of learning (raising the total Foundations credits to 15-16). It will therefore reduce the number of Areas of Inquiry credits that students are required to complete from 17-18 credits to 14-15 credits. This means there will be no increase in the total number of credits in the general education requirements.

This change in Foundation credits also means that students will now only be required to complete courses from at least three of the four Areas of Inquiry, taking at least three credits in each area for a total of 14-15 credits. (Currently, all four Areas of Inquiry are required, totalling 17-18 credits.)

NOTE: If you start at VCU prior to fall 2023, the requirement to take a racial literacy course will not apply to you. However, you are still welcome and encouraged to consider taking the course if space allows.