'Academic freedom is under assault': Indiana educators fear degree cuts will redefine higher ed

Indianapolis Star

11 hours ago

As the state and federal government continues to tighten its grip on university operations, Hoosier faculty and staff say the mass shuttering of degree programs across the state is another step toward eroding higher education outcomes and infringing on academic freedom.
Six public universities will cut or consolidate about 400 degree programs, or nearly 20% of the state's offerings, the Commission for Higher Education announced June 30.
That's in response to a new state law approved earlier this year to eliminate degrees with low numbers of graduating students. Over three years, undergraduate programs must average 15 graduates, seven for a master's degree program and three for a doctorate program, in order to automatically continue being offered without needing approval from the state.
More cuts could still be coming.
University faculty and staff across the state told IndyStar they believe these cuts will deter students and drive away faculty—further contributing to the brain drain state leaders are trying to curtail.
And they said the lack of appreciation for specialty fields and humanities will hurt student outcomes by shrinking their worldview and reducing soft skill and critical thinking development.
"We're not just talking about what professors can or can't teach," Ball State professor Timothy Berg said. "This is about the freedom of students to study the important subjects that contribute to a good economy and a good society."
State leaders have said the legislation will "streamline" degree program offerings to be in line with the state's economic goals and responsive to student demand. Gov. Mike Braun said in a press release that the move prepares students for "career opportunities in the most in-demand fields."
The Governor's Office did not respond to an IndyStar request for comment regarding academic freedom concerns.
Some professors and staff told IndyStar that they believe this legislation is an example of the government overstepping its role to dictate curricula, but not everyone said it is an explicit violation of their academic freedom.
However, they all said the larger movement to constrict higher education is.
"Academic freedom is under assault broadly," said Carl Pearson, a staff member at Indiana University-Bloomington. "That isn't just in Indiana. That's a national problem."
Academic freedom is defined as the ability for an academic institution's faculty and staff members to build curriculum, research and pursue knowledge without interference from government officials and administrators, according to several First Amendment organizations. Several U.S. Supreme Court cases have labeled academic freedom as protected under the First Amendment.
Indiana's Republican supermajority has passed a number of bills reshaping how Indiana's universities function. Many new laws, including the required degree cuts, are part of a wave of trendy, conservative polices sweeping red states.
In the past two years, the Indiana Legislature has codified a contentious bill mandating "intellectual diversity" on campus, a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, new tenure productivity standards and a change that makes faculty governance groups solely advisory.
Indiana University, too, has seen specific legislation that removed the ability for three trustees to be alumni-elected and barred state funding from touching the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.
Academic freedom advocates said this recent law, which was a last minute addition to the budget taken without public testimony, is another step to devalue higher education.
"When lawmakers tie a university's ability to offer programs to minimum enrollment numbers, they're not just making budget decisions. They're narrowing the scope of inquiry," said Amy Reid, a senior manager of PEN America's Freedom to Learn program. "It may not look like censorship, but it chills academic freedom just the same."
Though the legislation is strictly focused on graduation numbers, the liberal arts will see the most cuts and consolidations, especially in language and cultural studies programs. Regional campuses were also significantly affected since the quotas apply to all public universities, regardless of the size of the student body.
"Our institutions want to ensure the programs they're offering are responsive to student demand and fit the needs of Indiana's evolving economy," Commissioner for Higher Education Chris Lowery said in a news release. "The primary beneficiaries of this work will be students, who face an overwhelming number of degree programs as they make their educational and career decisions.'
This is part of shift away from shared governance between universities and their faculty, which has traditionally decided what students learn in the classroom.
Professors called the idea of prioritizing industrially in-demand degrees over others "shortsighted." Shifting students toward certain degrees for economic development purposes is a misunderstanding of the role of higher education and the economy at large, faculty and staff said.
Faculty and staff also emphasized that students, particularly those in graduate programs, potentially won't attend Hoosier universities at all because they'd rather attend their specific program elsewhere.
"We're basically removing those things as things that your students can study," Berg said. "We're really hamstringing ourselves with future opportunities for this shortsighted goal of saving money or reducing programs for efficiency."
While faculty and staff said economic development is an important piece, they disagreed that higher education's sole purpose is to funnel students into careers. Pearson said higher education is meant to create all-around educated citizens who think critically about issues facing their communities.
"That's a fundamentally different idea of what a university is," Pearson said. "(State leaders) want to create laborers. They want to create a workforce."
A PEN America column published earlier this year argued that laws in Iowa and Florida prioritizing college degree programs' return on investment is a form of censorship to target specific programs and limit the free exchange of ideas.
"We are already seeing a lot of pressure to eliminate programs that don't have this immediate visible cost benefit sort of return," Berg said. "It's going to push this idea that education is simply about job skills rather than helping students grow up and grow out so that they can be real contributors to a good society that we all want."
Purdue Fort Wayne professor Noor O'Neill teaches anthropology and women's studies, which are two programs slated for consolidation. She said limiting educational opportunities to what's best for economic development won't achieve the outcomes leaders desire and students will be left without needed critical thinking skills.
"It's definitely an attack on academic freedom in the sense that they're not allowing us to teach what the faculty believe needs to be taught," O'Neill said. "They're really putting pressure on narrowing the curriculum."
It's largely unclear what the future of many of these programs will look like. Many departments are expected to be folded under a more general umbrella degree, while others may become concentrations rather than a standalone program. Some could be outright eliminated.
Following the bill's passage, faculty and staff said they have not been given much direction from their university's administration, and any communication about department cuts and realignment has come from department chairs and other school-specific leaders.
The uncertainty and larger wave of legislation focused on higher education, academics said, will likely cause their colleagues to leave voluntarily.
Berg said he's seen faculty leave already due to the lack of transparency and the feeling of being abandoned. He and others said they felt their administrations could have done more to demonstrate the need for their fields and fought to keep them alive.
"I've never felt more abandoned and alone in that what I do doesn't matter," Berg said.
Others, like Pearson, are waiting to learn what will happen to their departments and whether there will be layoffs. O'Neill worries this law will be used as an excuse to layoff faculty and staff who have certain political leanings or say things the university doesn't like. She said all faculty are already censoring themselves in the classroom in response to the new laws.
Another staff member at Indiana University told IndyStar that the stress and uncertainty within higher education will likely cause an exodus of students and academics, including himself, out of the state over the next five years.
"I don't see higher ed as being the kind of place for academic freedom, academic inquiry that it used to be," he said. "In states like Indiana, it's going to be about technical training—making sure that your teaching, your research aligns with what politicians in Indianapolis think it should be about."
The USA TODAY Network - Indiana's coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.