Soon, the governor-appointed boards that manage Texas’s universities may be given additional authority to restrict the coursework that students must take and do away with degree programs.
The bill, which was delivered to Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday, is the most recent attempt by Republican-led governments to reform universities that they claim have been advancing liberal ideologies. Similar actions are taken in Ohio and Florida.
The state measures follow President Donald Trump’s administration’s foray into higher education, using federal funds and its control over student visas to suppress campus activism and stifle efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
According to some professors, the actions go against the academic freedom tenets that many colleges have upheld for many years.
The Texas law will give governing boards of higher education institutions the authority to examine and possibly overturn general education curriculum requirements in order to make sure that courses are valuable to students, necessary to prepare them for the workforce, and necessary to prepare them for civic and professional life.
Additionally, governing boards will have more authority over faculty councils, hiring academic administrators, and deciding whether to discontinue low-enrollment minor degree or certificate programs.
In order to look into complaints against institutions, including alleged infringement of prohibitions against diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, the bill also establishes a state ombudsman’s office.
When discussing the legislation on the House floor, Republican state representative Matt Shaheen stated, “The objective of this legislation is to provide consistency with respect to our curriculum and the degrees we’re offering our students.”
The act formalizes judgments already made at the university and won’t cause a “undue workload,” according to Ray Bonilla, an attorney with the Texas A&M University System, one of the biggest universities in the state.
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During a committee hearing in May, however, Democratic state representative Donna Howard stated that the proposal “seems to be extreme micromanagement on the part of the Legislature.”
A legislation in Ohio requires a particular curriculum
A new law in Ohio requires a civil literacy course to be completed in order to graduate, prohibits DEI programs at public colleges and universities, and deprives teachers of some collective bargaining and tenure protections.
The three-credit course must cover the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, as well as the ideas presented in Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr., and at least five essays from the Federalist Papers.
Additionally, the rule restricts the handling of “controversial beliefs or policies,” which are classified as marriage, abortion, DEI programs, electoral politics, immigration or foreign policy, and climate change.
In support of his bill, Republican state senator Jerry Cirino invoked progressive education pioneer John Dewey to denounce what he sees as a hard tack in the opposite direction at colleges and institutions.
