Public education has been a focus at the Legislature this year, but lawmakers are not just looking at bills related to K-12 schools.
Lawmakers are also considering bills about higher education. The Texas Senate passed SB 37, which would increase the state’s control over public Texas universities. The vote was mostly along party lines after an hour-long floor debate.
Isaiah Williams, who covered this issue for the student newspaper at UT Austin, The Daily Texan, said the bill would create a statewide committee to evaluate the curriculum at Texas’ public universities.
“It limits the number of faculty on faculty councils and faculty senates, which are these governing bodies that sometimes determine curriculum and also sometimes determine some of the university policies,” he said. “It establishes a complaint system in which people can file complaints of whether a university is teaching something in its curriculum that is against what the bill holds.”
The bill prohibits the teaching of certain topics — including gender studies or “identity politics” — in core classes students are required to take.
“It also talks about theories of systematic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege. You’re not allowed to teach those as inherent in the institutions of the United States,” Williams said. “Those kinds of studies would not be allowed in, for instance, the core curriculum. So all students couldn’t be required to learn those.”
The bill also includes a provision that could lead to the dissolution of certain degree programs.
“This bill includes what’s called a sunset provision. So there is this idea in the bill that if certain majors are deemed by the state to not give a return on investment to students, and they have this whole thing for measuring it within the bill, that the university could be directed to sunset those degree programs,” Williams said.
“And so once again, it’s not as if the bill is specifically prohibiting certain majors or prohibiting some fields of study, but it is making it more difficult for people to study those things.”
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The bill was heavily opposed by Senate Democrats and a number of professors at UT Austin also spoke out against it.
“A good number of UT professors testified against this bill in March, although I will say that it was a version of the bill that has since changed a little bit,” Williams said. “It has also gotten a good amount of criticism from organizations that bring professors together. I’m thinking about the American Association of University Professors.”
Williams said this bill will face a bigger hurdle in the Texas House as we get closer to the end of the session in May.
“It was one of Dan Patrick’s agenda items, and so there’s never really been a question over whether it would pass the State senate,” he said. “But it is coming up to the House, which is quite a bit of a larger hurdle.
The real question is going to be, will it get onto the State House’s Intent calendar, and then will it pass before the legislative session is over?”
