The University of Michigan will no longer require diversity statements as part of faculty hiring, promotion and tenure decisions, the school announced on Thursday, marking a major shift at one of the country’s leading public research institutions.

The new policy, issued by Michigan’s provost, comes as the university’s regents weigh a broader overhaul of its sprawling diversity, equity and inclusion programs, among the most ambitious and well financed in the country. At a public meeting on Thursday afternoon, Michigan’s regents and its president, Santa J. Ono, also announced a major expansion of the school’s signature scholarship program for lower-income students, the Go Blue Guarantee.

Some regents have indicated they are likely to seek cuts to the school’s large D.E.I. bureaucracy to offset the expansion, though those decisions will not be finalized until Michigan formulates its next annual budget.

After stripping out volatile food and fuel prices for a better sense of the underlying inflation trend, a “core” price index was a bit more stubborn on an annual basis. The core measure came in at 2.7 percent, up from 2.6 percent previously and in line with what economists had expected. But comparing prices from month to month, core inflation slowed to a modest 0.1 percent in August.

The new policy on diversity statements effectively overrules a hodgepodge of practices at the university’s undergraduate and graduate schools, most of which began using the statements in hiring in recent years.

“As we pursue this challenging and complex work, we will continuously refine our approach” to D.E.I., the provost, Laurie McCauley, said in a statement.

Michigan’s decision may add momentum to growing efforts to restrict the use of diversity statements, which have proliferated widely in academia in recent years. Schools that employ them typically ask job applicants to discuss how they would advance diversity and equity through their scholarship, teaching or community service. In states like Michigan and California, which ban direct racial preferences in hiring, the statements have been credited with helping public universities hire more diverse faculties.

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