What Happened: After integration, Commonwealth University is now reimplementing the advanced coursework requirement for the 2025-2026 academic year. The requirement is mandated by PASSHE and was halted while integration was taking place.
Why it Matters: Advanced coursework will now require all students with undergraduate degrees to have a total of 42 credit hours of classes that have been deemed as advanced coursework.
The Background: The advanced coursework requirement is something mandated by the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and was halted for students while the universities were being integrated into Commonwealth University.
Dr. Dennis Frohlich is an associate professor for the media and journalism department as well as the Chair of the university’s Curriculum Committee. He elaborated on what the advanced coursework requirement is.
“Basically the idea is that of a student’s 120 credits for their undergraduate degree, 42 would be at the advanced level,” he stated.
Going further, he said, “The purpose of that is so your degree is not filled with a bunch of 100-level gen ed classes that you’ll have some more rigorous and challenging classes.”
Who Does it Affect: What this means to students is that anybody in the legacy programs, which is the old Bloomsburg, Lockhaven and Mansfield, are not being held to this requirement.
“Because courses have been changed and programs somewhat dramatically in this integration process that it’s just a little too chaotic to try and hold all of the existing students to that,” Frohlich said.
“Anybody I believe graduating this semester or in the summer is not being held; that’s for students on the new CU curriculum.”
What Constitutes Advanced Coursework:
Frohlich also stated how that advanced coursework is not “a hard and fast rule,” mandated by PASSHE, and instead offers guidelines as to what constitutes advanced coursework. Prior to integration, each university handled its advanced coursework differently, which led to the requirement being halted.
Frohlich then spoke about how the university decides what to consider advanced coursework, stating, “Our general policy is that anything 300 and 400 is automatically advanced so that covers a big portion of our classes already.” Also considered advanced are graduate courses.
“The other ones that are automatic are courses that have six or more credits of prerequisites to them,” Frohlich said.
Frohlich also said how the curriculum committee went through courses to identify classes that could be considered advanced yet may not meet some of the guidelines, but are getting higher levels of teaching. This process identifies a few more classes, which include, as Frhohclich described, “a few dozen 200-level classes.”
