Universities have been huddling, trying to figure out ways to collectively withstand salvos from the White House. Recent events in Indiana suggest they will need to arm themselves against some statehouses, too.
Public universities are used to legislatures setting funding levels, and Indiana University just got handed a 5% cut in state funding. So it goes. But what happened last weekend in the final hours of a four-month legislative session went way beyond budgets.
Infuriated critics of the measure have lambasted what occurred as a stealthy power grab. One emeritus professor at Indiana University told the Indianapolis Star that the state had just witnessed a “complete takeover of universities by the governor and state legislature.”
Certainly, Republican legislators exerted new and draconian levels of control over Indiana University by quietly inserting language into a roughly 220-page bill that imposed major changes on the flagship Bloomington campus. The bill, which also affects several other Indiana schools and campuses, first emerged from committee on the evening of April 23 and was the subject of no previous bipartisan discussion. Within 48 hours, it had been passed by the House and Senate.
The language in House Bill 1001 gives the governor total control over the IU board of trustees by repealing the current rights of IU alumni to elect three of its members. Outside of a student member with a shortened term, Republican Gov. Mike Braun will now appoint everyone. But the language hardly confines itself to the Board of Trustees.
It also demands that IU secure state approval for any university degree program that falls below a certain threshold in terms of student enrollment; downgrades faculty governance into a purely advisory role; requires regular reviews of tenured faculty, undermining the notion of tenure; and jettisons emeritus faculty from any meaningful role.
The level of detail is such as to require faculty at IU to post their syllabi on the internet, presumably allowing legislators to scrutinize the content of classes.
Indiana lawmakers have the right to ensure that taxpayer money is being spent wisely, and not all of these ideas are terrible. Most Hoosiers outside of academe would not oppose tenured faculty still being subject to basic performance reviews, as occurs in most other professions. And those with a vested interest in small, costly degree programs should be able to justify their continued existence.
We’re also on board with the idea that some aspects of campus life, such as the absurd proliferation of administrators at the expense of those who actually teach students, need reform. We’ve consistently complained about tuition increases. And we support students being taught by a faculty that has ideological diversity, was hired on the basis of merit and does not squelch free speech in service of politically correct conformity.
But we don’t support a board of trustees entirely made up of the governor’s political patsies (at the University of Michigan, by contrast, voters choose the Board of Regents via biennial elections). Nor burdening academics with endless reports back to a state legislature wherein most members know little about best practices in higher education. Nor a wholesale attack on faculty governance. Nor the expunging of emeritus faculty and alumni from a significant role in how universities like IU decide what to teach and research.
And we worry that some of these Republican legislators are not so much interested in ideological diversity as swapping out one set of political leanings for another. It’s reasonable to require competence from tenured faculty but not to make them fear for their jobs if they take a position with which the legislature disagrees.
A more nuanced approach to reform would have recognized that the student experience and learning outcomes at a state’s flagship school are driven, first and foremost, by that university’s faculty.
To freeze them out in this way and replace them with politicized bureaucrats, ill-qualified to measure research or teaching productivity in arcane fields, is absurd. Plus it may incentivize the school to increase numbers at the expense of quality. And no one in the governor’s office or state legislature should be policing who has or has not adequately “posted” their syllabus and certainly not what it contains, assuming a robust peer and administrative review process is in place.
Guardrails to ensure accountability are fine. But instead of taking over the school in this Orwellian fashion, legislators should have emphasized that they value their leading university’s intellectual independence.
There’s another issue. Big Ten schools like IU compete for faculty talent. Faced with these kinds of restrictions, lots of professors would prefer to work in a friendlier environment. This might be good for the University of Illinois, but this state sends too many kids to IU for this not to be an issue for us.
The most egregious aspect of this whole affair is how major changes were introduced without any kind of meaningful, bipartisan debate or advance exposure to Indiana voters, not to mention parents, current students and potential applicants.
Indiana University matters greatly to Indiana. The school hardly has been a font of left-wing radicalism. Rather than merely signing the bill, as expected, Braun should listen first to stakeholders and the public and temper these excesses.
One test we have for sleazy legislation is how it applies when present parties are no longer in charge. The change regarding gubernatorial control of the Board of Trustees is scheduled to sunset on Jan. 1, 2028, exactly when Braun’s current term would come to an end.
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