State Senator Brandon Creighton (SD-4) proposed Senate Bill 37 on March 13. If it were to pass, the Texas legislature would establish a General Education Review Committee, tasked with checking current courses that qualify for general education credit at Texas public universities. The results of the Committee’s investigation would be made publicly available online on an annual basis.
The general education requirements at Texas public universities are in dire need of such a review.
General education requirements are supposed to give students a well-rounded, rigorous education that exposes them to different views and enhances critical thinking skills. But Texas universities have abused this mandate. “Diverse perspectives” now means mixing in activist courses with serious pedagogy. “Critical thinking skills” now looks like infusing core curricula with social justice ideology – in other words, Marxist critical theory.
The University of Texas at Austin, for instance, considers “Numbering Race” a quality general education math course. According to a 2019 syllabus, students in this course learn about “quantitative actions that justify racial thinking and impact our current collective and individual understandings of race.” To get a sense of how topics are approached, one picture declares “Our teaching force does not reflect the increasing diversity of America’s students” followed by the proportion of African American and Hispanic students (40%) and teachers (15%). Such rhetoric primes students to approach these statistics from an unsupported assumption that racial disparities must be corrected, rather than considering other possibilities. The class encourages students to use math to forward activist agendas rather than learning math to better understand the world.
Other courses across Texas public universities that currently qualify as quality general education courses include “Decolonizing Communication Studies,” where students fixate on “identity marginalization” in communication theory; “Diversity and Cultural Competence in the Workplace,” which teaches future human resource managers about critical race theory; and “Racism and Anti-Racism,” which teaches students to reflect on “solidarity and action” in the context of the “Black Lives Matter movement to end racism.”
State governments have a strong interest in overseeing which courses qualify for general education credits at taxpayer-funded universities. Modern course rosters have become Cheesecake Factory menus – bloated and overwhelming to navigate, with a confusing mixture of legitimate and corrupted options. Right now, we simply hope students stumble upon the courses that will set them up for success and avoid the ideological landmines. A review committee, on the other hand, would streamline the process of selecting general education requirements and guide students to courses that provide valuable skills and knowledge. With Texas’s booming economy it also remains important to cultivate a workforce with the requisite skills and education to meet demand.
Some may be concerned that a review committee is a way for the state government to censor ideas they don’t like. But the Texas Education Code already gives some authority to the Higher Education Coordinating Board to set the objectives and purpose that approved general education courses should meet. Reviewing whether the courses actually meet these standards is about ensuring accountability. The committee neither stops professors from teaching any course at a university nor does it stop students from taking other courses as electives.
Texas students—and the taxpayers funding them—deserve an education that will expand their minds and prepare them for productive adulthoods, not one that indoctrinates them in leftist ideologies. A General Education Review Committee represents a promising step toward restoring academic integrity in the state’s public universities.
Neetu Arnold is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute and a Young Voices contributor. Follow her on X @neetu_arnold.