General Requirements for a Baccalaureate Degree

All candidates for a bachelor's degree at the University of Houston must meet certain minimum requirements. Additional requirements may be imposed by the individual department or college. Students should refer to the department or college section of this catalog for complete requirements and total number of hours prescribed for the specific degree.

The following are the minimum requirements for a bachelor's degree:

1. Students must complete at least 120 semester hours of courses. At least 36 of the 120 semester hours must be advanced, according to the requirements of respective degree plans.
2. A repeated course cannot be counted as elective credit toward satisfying the requirement for graduation or counted toward the minimum of 120 hours credit toward graduation, unless the course is identified in the Undergraduate Studies catalog as repeatable. Repeatable courses, such as Independent Study or Selected Topics courses, are often designed to be taken more than once for additional credits each time.
3. A repeated course, including courses repeated during a summer session, is equivalent to a new course both in the determination of classification and in computing the cumulative grade point average. Students may not enroll in any course more than three times, including W, F, and I grades, without permission from the college of their major. When a course is repeated, only the best attempt will be considered toward degree requirements. All attempts will remain on the student's official transcript and count toward the student's major and minor grade point averages and cumulative grade point average calculations. Please note that minimum grades may be required in specific courses in the student's degree plans. This policy does not apply to courses referred to as repeatable in Requirement 2 above (e.g., Selected Topics courses).
4. Students must complete the state-mandated 42 hour core curriculum (see Core Curriculum Requirements section of this catalog).
5. Students must complete all course requirements of the major as specified in the college section of the catalog, some of which may also satisfy university core curriculum requirements.
6. Students must earn a 2.00 minimum cumulative grade point average in courses with the subject code of the minor attempted at the university. Exceptions to this policy may be found in the requirements of specific minors.
7. Students must earn a 2.00 minimum cumulative grade point average in courses with the subject code of the major attempted at the university. Exceptions to this policy may be found in the requirements of specific majors.
8. Students must earn a 2.00 minimum cumulative grade point average at the university.
9. In addition to these general requirements, candidates for graduation must meet all special degree requirements as specified in the appropriate college sections in which the major is completed.
10. Students cannot satisfy any degree requirements in their major with advanced courses that were completed more than seven years before the semester in which the degree is awarded, unless they receive permission from their college dean.
11. Students must complete at least 25 percent of the semester hours required for a degree in residence or if 25 percent includes a fraction of a semester hour, the requirement must be rounded up to the nearest whole number of a semester hour.  a)These residence hours are not to include credit by examination, independent study, or individual research courses taken at the University of Houston.  b)A minimum of nine semester hours of advanced work in the major field must be completed in residence.
12. The last 30 semester hours to be applied toward a bachelor's degree must be taken in residence.

Catalog Publish Date: August 18, 2011
This Page Last Updated: August 16, 2011
Effective Date of Archive: December 19, 2011