Texas university systems have adhered to the letter of the state’s ban on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices, statements, and trainings. Among the five largest universities, Texas A&M led the way. UT-Austin belatedly disbanded its DEI offices, after Sen. Brandon Creighton penned a letter asking all universities to explain how they had followed SB 17.
If university presidents are complying with DEI bans, strategic plans foster defiance. Texas’ big five universities (Texas Tech, University of Houston, University of North Texas, Texas A&M, and University of Texas) still have DEI sown into their strategic plans.
None of UT’s old, radical DEI strategic plans are available on its website any longer. Texas A&M removed its 2010 Diversity Plan from its website, as well as its more radical 2020 State of Diversity Report. Yet the goals of these diversity plans persist in strategic plans. Among the goals in A&M’s current strategic plan, for instance, are hopes to “close equity gaps” among student admissions and retention and in faculty hiring and to foster “a climate of respect and inclusivity” while addressing “campus climate and equity issues proactively.” Is A&M for DEI or against it?
Other universities have kept pro-DEI goals in their strategic plans, as well. Texas Tech University still operates under the strategic plan entitled “A Foundation for the Next Century, A Pathway to 2025,” which aims to “advance and sustain a campus climate and culture characterized by accessibility, inclusiveness, and high academic quality” and to “improve the quality and diversity of the incoming student body.” The 2020-25 strategic plan at University of North Texas hopes to “expand/develop student services to encourage students’ sense of belonging, growth mindset, well-being, and mental health” and promote “inclusion and student success practices and policies.” The University of Houston’s “Together, We Rise. Together, We Soar” seeks to provide a “top tier, inclusive education for all” and to “bolster efforts by. . .students, staff and faculty to seek social justice and racial equity.”
DEI is embedded in strategic plans beyond these five schools. As of Fall 2023, only Texas Southern and University of Texas Permian Basin among the 37 public universities in Texas had no DEI goals in their strategic plans and no distinct DEI strategic plans. Texas universities are between two stools. Their own strategic plans demand DEI functions, while SB 17 prohibits them. Universities are sitting on both stools.
Texas universities should undertake new strategic planning processes to comply with SB 17. All of them should remove strategic objectives informed by equity, inclusivity, and faculty and student diversity from amended strategic plans. New strategic plans should direct universities to unwind how critical theories have been sown into the fabric of university life. Ridding universities of DEI offices is not enough. Programs infused with DEI should be put on the chopping block, and an alternative vision for education should inform university curriculum. Curriculum and hiring must be adapted to different objectives.
For starters, none of the big five universities define “good education” in their previous strategic plans. Their plans include anodyne objectives like aiming to “educate and empower a diverse student body” (University of Houston) or “creating engaging and supportive learning environments” (North Texas). Instead of process-based goals, new strategic plans should prioritize specific education outcomes. A new strategic objective might read: “Emphasizing Western civilization and scientific literacy in the general education, while eliminating courses infused with identity politics or not concerned with foundational knowledge from the general education.”
Texas’ requirements on American and Texas history provide a model for the rest of the country. No undergraduate degree is granted without the student completing six credits in American History, three of which may be in Texas History. Every college and university receiving state support must also require courses that include a consideration of the U.S. Constitution and the Texas Constitution.
Many Texas universities have kept such requirements focused on fundamentals. University of Houston has five courses that fulfill the history requirements. University of North Texas has four. Texas Tech has only three. Other universities have allowed all kinds of mischief under this requirement. Texas A&M offers only two courses to satisfy its government requirements, but it offers ten courses including two courses on Blacks in American History and a course entitled “Southwest Borderlands,” all of which have upper-division designations. More dross has accumulated at UT, where five courses satisfy the Constitution requirement and over 30 courses satisfy the history requirement—nearly all of these are niche courses.
Boards of Regents should cull the dross that has accumulated around these requirements so that truly fundamental courses alone satisfy them. Sen. Dan Patrick, now Lt. Gov. Patrick, proposed a bill to do just this in 2013. The legislature might revive it.
Laws on American history and government provide models for general education reform throughout the Texas system. Texas’ legislature could define precisely what they are looking to accomplish in humanities classes (basic competence in American literature, English literature, or Russian literature, or basic knowledge of ancient and modern philosophic principles, for instance) and ask what, if anything, in the social sciences is fundamental.
Both elements would mean culling dross from general education in Texas universities. For the Language, Philosophy and Culture requirement at Texas Tech, for example, students must choose one class from a list of about 45. When students are choosing one class from such an extensive list, this is an elective system, and no knowledge is really fundamental. Classes like “Literature, Social Justice & the Environment” (ENGL 2310), “The Vampire in East European and Western Culture” (SLAV 2301), and “Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies” (WGS 2300) could easily be swept away, but it would be best to focus on several survey courses in American, English, Russian, or ancient literature instead of strange niche courses. The same pattern is repeated throughout the big five schools. 115 courses meet the Language, Philosophy, and Culture requirements at A&M. There are around 90 at Houston, and 34 at North Texas.
Under Texas A&M’s Social and Behavioral Science requirement, students must take one class from a list of 60, including “Social Welfare as a Social Institution” and “The Psychology of Adjustment.” If there are 60 classes, again, none is foundational and the requirements are akin to an elective system. UT has around 60 courses (including nearly 20 Sociology courses like “Gender, Race, and Class in American Society” and “Diversity in American Families”) which satisfy its Social and Behavioral Science requirements. University of North Texas has 26 classes in its Social and Behavioral Science core, including “Diversity and Inclusion in Recreation, Event, and Sport Organizations” and “Minority Aging.” Texas Tech has 36 in its core for 2024-25, including “Diversity and Cultural Competence in the Workplace.” Houston has a modest 19.
General education creep happens for good reasons, especially in departments struggling for enrollments. Butts in seats mean resources and survival for departments without many majors. Such departments seek to insinuate themselves everywhere in the general education to get those butts in seats so they can, in a sense, artificially inflate their numbers. Consider Anthropology at North Texas. Anthropology had 15 master’s students and granted 28 undergraduate degrees in 2022 (the last year for which I could find numbers). It has seven full-time tenure or tenure track faculty and three lecturers. To stay afloat, it must get butts in general education courses. Fully 13 Anthropology classes fulfill student requirements in Language, Philosophy, and Culture. Anthropology classes can also help fulfill requirements for Social and Behavioral Science (2 courses), Creative Arts (1), Life and Physical Science (1), and Fine Arts (1).
General education reform is likely to decrease demand for majors like Anthropology. This will pave the way for the next phase of higher education reform.
Program Review
Program reviews traditionally involve shuttering uneconomical degree programs and shrinking departments less central to an institution’s educational mission. Sometimes program reviews are triggered by financial emergencies, but often they are part of the normal business of self-evaluation on campuses.
Texas A&M, hardly a struggling university, has recently conducted a program review of sorts. It has deactivated “low performing” minors and certificate programs that had fewer than 10 graduates in the past two years. Included among the cut programs were minors in LGBTQ+ and Asian Studies and certificates in “Diversity and Social Justice,” “Popular Culture,” and “Performing Social Activism.” The courses “associated with the deactivated programs will be unaffected,” however. None of these programs were free-standing departments. Such moves are the beginning of genuine program reviews.
Are university departments worth the investment?
Comprehensive program review should not simply be centered on student-demand metrics, financial performance at the department level, and predictions about market demand for majors. Strategic plans should favor programs that are efficient, of course, but also programs that promote scientific literacy, cultivate an appreciation for our civilizational heritage, and provide workforce education. Departments with a corrupt and corrupting vision of education should receive demerits during program review. I have laid out a process for accomplishing this elsewhere.
Such measures would bring needed focus to Texas universities—and improve an education system that is already among the best in the country. Texas cannot simply ban its way to good education. It must also strategically plan to provide a better vision of an educated citizen.
This is a commentary published with the author’s permission. If you wish to submit a commentary to Texas Scorecard, please submit your article to submission@texasscorecard.com.
