07-05-2025
Why university professors say Texas Senate Bill 37 would be disastrous for higher education
A Texas House committee is proposing to eliminate several controversial measures targeting higher education from a Senate-approved bill that seeks to remove university faculty from shared governance and hiring decisions, while restricting required coursework for students.
As the Texas House Higher Education Committee took up Senate Bill 37 late Tuesday, with discussions stretching into early Wednesday, dozens of professors and students sat in stiff chairs urging lawmakers to reject the legislation.
The central debate between the bill's proponents and opponents focused on a key question: When does education shift into indoctrination, and does higher education in Texas require more regulation?
The House's version of SB 37, presented by Republican state Rep. Matt Shaheen of Plano, made significant changes to the Senate's proposal, notably keeping final authority on academic degrees and curriculum with universities. The Senate's version grants that authority to university boards of regents, which are political appointments. Shaheen said he met with university leaders three times before introducing his revisions, and many who testified before the committee thanked him for the changes.
'A lot of the changes that they requested are in this bill,' Shaheen said about university leaders.
The House version also restricted university system regents' hiring authority to presidents, vice presidents and deans. Texas A&M University System General Counsel Ray Bonilla testified that this revision would reduce the boards' legal liability for employment decisions. The House panel also cut the Senate-outlined process for ending degree programs with certain levels of associated debt, softening language to direct presidents to review programs and minors for low enrollment that "may require consolidation or elimination."
Most processes now are "at the institutional level," Shaheen said in allaying fears about political appointees ― such as boards of regents that are appointed by the governor ― overruling decisions made by faculty experts. The bill, however, kept in place the regents' "ultimate authority" over nearly all decisions, including on whether to allow faculty senates to exist at an institution and to annually review leaders who oversee curriculum.
Despite the House changes, professors, students and higher education advocates who testified against the bill argued that any version of SB 37 would crush institutions' ability to foster productive faculty governance and education.
SB 37 states that a university's core curriculum cannot 'advocate or promote the idea that any race, sex, or ethnicity or any religious belief is inherently superior to any other race, sex, or ethnicity or any other religious belief," and it creates a new Office of Ombudsman to investigate public accusations that a school's curriculum isn't following SB 37 or an anti-diversity, equity and inclusion bill that lawmakers passed in 2023. Professors from disciplines including medicine, history, social work, music and art testified that the bill would restrict their ability to address topics such as diversity, racial disparities or history.
"In the past, I have not shied away from exploring difficult aspects of American history, including racial segregation and Japanese internment. This would no longer be possible if SB 37 passes," said Lauren Gutterman, who testified as an individual but spoke from her experience as a UT associate professor who teaches history classes that count toward core requirements.
"How could I talk openly about history of immigration or LGBTQ rights movement when I know what could happen?" she asked.
'Pigeonholed': Why some lawmakers, students are backing Texas SB 37
Sen. Brandon Creighton, the Republican from Conroe who chairs the Senate Education K-16 Committee and authored SB 37, said his legislation provides a clear delineation of faculty senates' advisory role and tailors university curriculum and degrees to "credentials of value" at a time when trust in higher education institutions is shrinking among Republicans.
From 2012 to 2019, Republicans' views on colleges having a negative effect on the country jumped from 35% to 59%, while Democrats have remained largely stable in their positive view of higher education at 67% over the same period, according to the Pew Research Center.
"We're teaching courses that are not going to aid a student in their career and the like, we need to seriously ask why that's being offered," Shaheen said.
William Rodriguez, a senior at Texas A&M, testified that as a finance major to fulfill his requirement, he took a class in which he felt "pigeonholed" into only certain views, such as with global warming. Those who testified later said scientific facts and historical events do not need to be political, but they fear they will become partisan tools.
Paola Martinez, a senior at UT-El Paso, took a women studies course and said she read no politically conservative or moderate lessons, and she wished she had been exposed to more viewpoints.
Texas isn't alone in seeking to regulate higher education. In Indiana, lawmakers inserted a provision in its state budget that stripped faculty senate powers, allocated more authority to regents and established an enrollment threshold for degrees. Ohio and Utah have also passed laws limiting how and what faculty members may teach. But the Texas proposal has gained national attention for its scope and its implications for academic freedom.
Under SB 37, faculty members can't be involved in considerations over faculty grievances nor will they have final decision-making authority over someone's hiring, delivering on Gov. Greg Abbott's call during his State of the State address in February to keep faculty members from employment deliberations. The bill would also prohibit faculty members from electing their own faculty governance leader and from electing its membership. Instead, an institution's president would pick the faculty senate leadership, while retaining the power to remove any member who appears to advance a political agenda.
Caitilin Smith, who testified as an individual but teaches human sexuality and development, shared anonymized end of semester feedback from her students about critical thinking in her classes, including a conservative Christian who said they found "opportunities for greater education and understanding, especially with topics I'm not comfortable with." With SB 37, she said, students would not be pushed to learn in the same way, lowering the value of a university education that is supposed to prepare students not just for careers but for meaningful lives.
"Our society and our workforce need graduates who are able to have difficult conversations while remaining grounded in their values," Smith said. "SB 37 will transform our institutions of higher learning into mere degree mills, and many of us will not stand for that or even stay in Texas for that."
At 1 a.m. Wednesday, the bill was left pending in committee after about a half-hour of committee members quizzing Shaheen on officials' testimony. Shaheen said he has "high confidence" the Senate will accept the changes.
Wynne Chin, a distinguished professor at the University of Houston who is a past faculty senate president, advised the House panel that SB 37 is already depriving Texas of top talent.
"Regarding recruiting, this bill is already being raised as a point of concern from people I'm trying to hire. Conversely, several star professors at UH have told me they are seriously considering leaving Texas because of this bill," Chin said. "And personally, a number of universities have already reached out to me to consider joining their institutions explicitly mentioning their awareness of this bill.
"Overall, this bill's proposed structural changes will lead to increased costs and less effectiveness immediately and negative longer term economic impact on Texas due to inability to recruit top talent and brain drain of our world class researchers."
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: SB 37 risks Texas' higher education freedom, excellence: faculty
