Texas A&M Regents Overrule Faculty, cut 52 “Low-Producing” Programs

By Kate McGee, The Texas Tribune

The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents on Thursday unanimously directed its flagship university to disband an LGBTQ+ studies minor, months after conservative lawmakers and websites accused the program of promoting “liberal indoctrination” on campus.

The LGBTQ Studies minor is one of 14 minors and 38 certificate programs that administrators said were “low-producing,” according to a new process they developed to identify and eliminate programs with low enrollments. But faculty argue the process used inaccurate information and faulty data. It also kept faculty from providing input about curriculum decisions, they said.

“This has never happened before,” said Angie Hill Price, a professor and speaker of A&M’s Faculty Senate. “We have no precedent for a board to decide [to end academic programs] over the wishes of faculty and the president which they deemed low-performing.”

Dozens of faculty attended the board meeting Thursday to oppose the regents’ decision.

The board’s vote to eliminate these programs comes as the Texas Senate subcommittee on higher education is set to meet Monday to review the role of faculty senates at Texas public universities. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick directed the Senate to examine these groups, which are elected governing bodies made up of professors from colleges across a university who represent their colleagues and work with university leadership on academic matters. Patrick also asked lawmakers ahead of next year’s legislative session to make recommendations to establish guidelines for what faculty senates’ role on campuses should be.

According to the regents’ resolution to end the programs, their decision ignored a request by Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh III to halt the review process and gather more input from other faculty senates in the A&M system. The board of regents believed there was sufficient faculty review and directed the school to move forward.

Welsh did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Board members and university administrators contend that these minors and certificates should be eliminated because they don’t meet new enrollment thresholds recently established by the university.

At the meeting Thursday, Board Member Robert Albritton denied accusations that the decision to eliminate the LGBTQ Studies minor was politically motivated. He said the board has a fiduciary responsibility to eliminate programs with low enrollment.

But faculty say that the reasoning lacks an understanding of how these departments manage enrollment in these minor and certificate programs.

“They either had no information and made a decision on incomplete information or they had a different agenda and the information didn’t matter,” Price said.

Praise and criticism

The Texas A&M Women and Gender Studies Department introduced the LGBTQ Studies minor in fall of 2022. The university celebrated the new program in a June 2023 press release.

Professor Theresa Morris, who helped develop the minor, said it would provide students with cultural competencies that would help them in the workplace and help LGBTQ+ Aggies better understand their own identities.

“The symbolism of having this minor means something — particularly to the students who have these identities,” Morris said in the press release. “It’s like a formal recognition by the university that this is important, and that can mean a lot to the people who feel that their experience has been peripheralized by society.”

Two weeks later, the conservative website Texas Scorecard published a piece about multiple Texas public universities that offered a minor in LGBTQ+ studies, including Texas A&M.

Texas Scorecard has often written about the A&M system’s flagship university. Last year, the university watered down a job offer to a Black journalist, Kathleen McElroy, after Texas Scorecard called her a “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion proponent.” The negotiations to hire her ultimately fell through and the university paid her a $1 million settlement.

According to a Texas A&M spokesperson, the university started receiving questions from inside and outside the university about the LGBTQ Studies minor the semester after it was launched, prompting the school to examine its programs. Administrators identified 70 certificates and minors that had zero or few graduates or enrollees.

In August 2023, Provost Alan Sams started to work with the university’s deans to create a way to evaluate a program’s performance. It was modeled after the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board’s standards for majors, an A&M spokesperson said. The state classifies a bachelor’s degree program as “low-producing” if it awards fewer than five degrees in a year and fewer than 25 degrees in five years. The state agency that oversees public higher education does not have a process for reviewing minors.

Using this system, A&M identified 52 minors and certificates to eliminate.

In January, state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, started tweeting about the LGBTQ Studies minor offered at his alma mater. “Texas A&M is offering a MINOR in this?? What. The. Hell,” he wrote. He vowed to find out if the university was using state resources to finance the program.

In February, he told the conservative news site The Daily Caller that he had a “lengthy discussion” with Sams in which he asked him to discontinue the minor.

The university confirmed the provost spoke with Harrison about the LGBTQ Studies minor as they were establishing processes to determine which programs to eliminate.

Harrison posted on social media in September that A&M System Chancellor John Sharp alerted him the school was ending the minor.

“Proud to have helped deliver this victory for Texas taxpayers, who should never be forced to fund,” Harrison wrote on the social media site X.

The board of regents also voted Thursday to direct other university presidents in the A&M system to review their minors and certificates to identify low-producing programs that could be eliminated. They also directed Sharp to revise the system policies about low-producing degree programs to include minors and certificate programs. Once added, the board would have to approve the amended policy at its February 2025 meeting.

State Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, who chairs the Texas Senate’s higher education subcommittee, praised the board’s vote Thursday on social media.

“Proud to see the reforms we passed in the Texas Senate making a real impact at Texas A&M,” he wrote.” More bold reforms are coming for higher ed in the 89th session.”

Disclosure: Texas A&M University and Texas A&M University System have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/07/texas-a-m-lgbtq-studies-minor/.