Efforts to eliminate college classes that lawmakers say don’t meet Texas’ workforce needs have some educators and advocates worried about the future of the state’s social and cultural richness.
State colleges face a major overhaul as lawmakers finalize a proposal to give politically connected regents more power over what’s taught and who they hire. Republican leaders say universities, overtaken by liberal bias, have eschewed their responsibility of preparing students to land jobs.
But some professors see the lawmakers’ emphasis on workforce development in the legislation as an attack on the humanities, arts and social sciences, which often don’t lead to a high-paying job immediately after graduation.
Chipping away at or even eliminating those programs could have wide-ranging implications for the cultural development of Texas’ cities, humanities advocates say.
An education solely focused on graduating better workers — and not better thinkers — could erode how much students invest in the communities they later work in, said Seemee Ali, president of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture at Southern Methodist University.
“What do we lose if we focus solely on financial prosperity? We lose a kind of rootedness,” she said.
“If you’re only in a city to make money, you may not care about the impact of a business decision, or a poorly designed building, or inadequate resources for educators,” she added. “You may just come in to make your money and then go.”
Senate Bill 37, one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s top priorities, received initial House approval in an 83-53 vote Saturday.
The wide-ranging bill would place more state oversight on what courses public universities teach and who is hired, and significantly decrease the role of faculty senates. It would also create a governor-appointed ombudsman’s office to investigate concerns at state schools, such as allegations that they are getting around the state’s DEI ban.
The proposal aims to grant students “degrees of value” more efficiently and at a lower cost, bill author Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said on the Senate floor last month.
But professors have called the bill an attack on faculty governance and academic freedom. They worry placing curriculum decisions in the hands of politically connected governing boards would threaten their ability to teach controversial topics, such as diversity or racial disparities.
Patrick has long said he wants to roll back the “woke left” on college campuses. ers say the bill builds on the state’s ban on DEI programs, which Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law last session.
The legislation ed the Texas Senate in a 20-11 vote in April. Senators must work out differences with House from their version in order to send it to Abbott.
Under SB 37, governing boards would ensure core courses are “foundational and fundamental,” prepare students for “civic and professional life” and “equip students for participation in the workforce” and “the betterment of society.”
Presidents would review and eliminate low-enrollment minors and certificates that do not have “specific industry data to substantiate workforce demand.”
The Senate-approved version would allow governing boards to withhold state funds from or eliminate certain degree programs based on their return on investment and student debt levels, unless they are necessary to meet state workforce demands.
The proposal concerns Karma Chávez, chair of the Mexican American and Latino studies department at the University of Texas at Austin, whose students don’t go on to work in a single industry or career, but apply their skills in areas such as media relations, legal services and nonprofit jobs.
If lawmakers rely on return on investment or “specific industry data” to determine whether to keep a minor, ethnic studies programs could be swept up in cuts, she said.
“For most of the humanities, this kind of data just doesn’t exist,” she said. “There’s no direct line [between a humanities degree and an industry]. If that’s going to be their criteria, all of us are going to be severely impacted by this.”
The bill presents a narrow view of the relationship between a college education and workforce demand, said Julia Brookins, senior program analyst for teaching and learning at the American Historical Association.
Republican leaders assume “there should be a degree program with one name on one side and then a job title with the same name on the other side,” she said. “That’s not how a market economy works and it’s not how the American workforce works.”
Creighton’s office did not provide comment on concerns about the bill.
Democrats against the bill say university officials already consider workforce needs when determining what courses to offer.
They point to state initiatives aimed at increasing post-secondary credentials — such as Abbott’s 60x30 plan launched in 2015 and its replacement, the Building a Talent Strong Texas plan, that came in 2022.
But some students say the proposal is a necessary reprieve from courses that have no relevance to their degrees or future careers.
Will Rodriguez, a recent graduate of Texas A&M who studied finance, said the core courses he took to fulfill graduation requirements — including those on architectural world history, Olympic studies and planet Earth — did not help prepare him “for when I eventually step out into society and into the workforce.”
Instead, he described the classes as “wasted time and money in an already expensive and lengthy process of receiving my higher education” at a recent House committee hearing.
The three classes, he calculated, could have paid for half a year of rent.
Lawmakers’ emphasis on workforce needs comes as Texas is on track to have over 1.8 million job openings annually between 2022 and 2032, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. The state also has greater demand than supply for nurses, personal financial advisers, software developers and physician assistants.
Most of these jobs require education beyond high school, but workforce advocates fear Texans may lack access to these opportunities due to insufficient credentials for those roles.
Only 36% of the state’s full-time workers had a bachelor’s degree from 2017 to 2021 — humanities graduates made up about a quarter of those, according to research from Robert Townsend, program director for the humanities, arts and culture at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“Humanities majors, like other college graduates, are doing considerably better than anybody who doesn’t have a college degree. There’s a clear return on investment just from finishing the degree,” Townsend said.
Professors worry that the vague language in the bill, which does not specify how regents would measure the value of a degree, would allow them to remove programs they disagree with ideologically or don’t have an immediate return on investment, but still lead to valuable careers.
Democrats echoed this concern throughout debates at the Capitol, noting that some critical jobs in Texas, like teachers, are not necessarily well-paid.
In response, Rep. Matt Shaheen, R-Plano, who introduced the House version of the bill, told colleagues at a recent hearing the proposal does not put “barriers or goal posts” on how regents should determine a degree’s value. Instead, he said, governing boards should consider their community’s workforce needs.
“We’ve got to trust our institutions to make the right decisions,” he said.
Whether humanities programs will be targeted by SB 37’s mandate depends on the data governing boards use to determine the value of a program, said Jarrad Toussant, senior vice president of education and workforce at the Dallas Regional Chamber.
Humanities degrees may not show a significant return on investment three years after graduation, he said. But a decade later, humanities graduates start to close the gap with other degree programs.
That’s because those students typically move through one or two jobs before they land at a high-paying job where they apply the skills they’ve learned, Townsend said.
Humanities majors working in Texas make a median salary of $65,301, which is 75% higher than the median earnings of workers with just a high school degree, according to Townsend’s research.
“The proof will be in the pudding,” Toussant said. “We’ve got a ways to go to ensure that we do properly value some of the degrees that don’t show up with immediate value upon graduation the way others might.”
University of North Texas President Harrison Keller says concerns about the humanities under the proposal are misplaced. Employers will always need workers with soft skills, such as teamwork, communication, critical thinking, time management and leadership, he said.
That said, Keller encourages humanities majors to stack workforce credentials upon their degree. Doing so increases the range of job options for candidates, he said.
Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse said his institution does everything within its power to keep humanities programs because they serve a purpose for creating well-rounded, civil, civically engaged citizens.
“If everyone was engineers, we’d have a problem,” he said.
Editor’s note: This story was updated May 24 to note the House’s initial approval of Senate Bill 37.
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas and the DMN Education Lab, community-funded journalism initiatives. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.
The Future of North Texas is ed by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas.
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas. It is ed by Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron and Phyllis Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks and the University of Texas at Dallas.
