UT System makes it easier to shutter programs, fire faculty

Dive Brief:

The University of Texas System’s board on Thursday unanimously approved new rules making it easier for its institutions to eliminate programs and cut faculty. 
The revised policy allows presidents in the UT system’s nine universities to cut programs without faculty review and to remove individual faculty roles under a stripped-down appeals process. 
The change comes amid widespread concerns over academic freedom at Texas public colleges following new curricular rules, politicized firings of professors and a state law that reduced faculty governance bodies to advisory-only roles.

Dive Insight:

Under the new rules, a UT institution’s chief academic officer can recommend cutting academic programs and faculty positions using criteria set by the president. 

Those reviews could include — but aren’t limited to — considerations such as cost, completion rates, student demand and enrollment, the “appropriate prioritization” of degree programs, and whether positions “may be eliminated with minimum effect upon degree programs,” according to the rule.  

Effective immediately, a president’s decision to eliminate an entire program isn’t subject to appeal. Tenured faculty in programs or positions facing elimination previously had the right to participate in the review process, which was overseen by a committee of faculty members and administrators. 

The new rules also give UT college presidents the ability to accelerate program eliminations without any academic review in “rare, extraordinary, and time-sensitive circumstances when standard review procedures are not viable.” That could include new federal or state requirements on universities that “pose a material risk to institutional compliance” but not financial pressure or enrollment declines on their own, per the rules.   

The new system policy dictates that faculty members can only appeal an individual position elimination if they have a “protected property interest” — meaning they are legally entitled to due process — and their job is not being cut as part of a broader program elimination. 

In those cases, only an individual professor can appeal to a committee of faculty and administrators, and only about whether the decision to terminate them “rather than another individual in the same discipline or teaching specialty was arbitrary and unreasonable,” the rule states.

With those appeals, the burden is on the appealing faculty member to provide “the greater weight of the credible evidence.” Ultimately, the appeal committee only provides advice, and the final decision rests with the UT institution’s president, subject to approval by a UT System executive. 

UT System board Chair Kevin Eltife said at Thursday’s meeting that the policy revisions are meant to “modernize and clarify the rules to improve usability and efficiency.” 

“They were developed in consultation with system administration, institutional stakeholders, and were also circulated to institutional presidents, faculty, student, and staff stakeholders for additional review,” said Eltife, a former Republican state senator and an alumnus of the University of Texas-Austin. 

The changes have faced pushback from both faculty and students in an era when Texas lawmakers and public colleges are taking more control of curriculum, campus speech and faculty makeup. The policy revisions also follow high-profile, politically-charged firings of professors at Texas A&M University and Texas State University. 

On Wednesday, students held a mock funeral at the UT-Austin — complete with a horse-drawn hearse and Grim Reaper — protesting the death of academic freedom. The student group behind the demonstration is also calling for a donor strike on the UT system until it “takes significant steps to protect academic freedom” and the rights of employees and students.

Along with the rule making it easier for presidents to cut programs and faculty roles, the regents created a formal policy gutting shared governance by transforming faculty senates in the system into advisory-only bodies to comply with a state law passed last year.

Earlier this year, the UT System adopted new restrictions on teaching topics deemed “controversial” or “contested” over numerous concerns voiced by faculty.

Some universities in the system, including the University of Texas-San Antonio and UT-Austin, are also consolidating programs in race, gender and ethnic studies — frequent political targets of conservative activists and lawmakers who view the fields as divisive and ideological. 

Several students, alumni and faculty members spoke out against the consolidations at a Wednesday regents meeting, arguing it would hurt education and scholarship at UT institutions.