Highereducation:
Committee passes bill scaling back controls, mandating chancellors OK presidents’ firings.
The power of public university governing boards to fire campus presidents would be scaled back under legislation approved by the Senate Higher Education Committee.
The power of public university governing boards in Texas to fire campus presidents and otherwise control institutions of higher learning would be scaled back under legislation approved Wednesday by the Senate Higher Education Committee.
The panel also signed off on a measure to modify certain automatic admission provisions for the University of Texas.
Senate Bill 15, authored by Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, and nine of his fellow senators, is a response to allegations by legislative leaders — including Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate — that UT System regents have crossed the line from governance into micromanagement of the Austin flagship.
The Senate and House passed resolutions in January honoring UT President Bill Powers amid reports that some regents were trying to force him out.
Under Seliger’s bill, a governing board could not fire a president unless the system’s chancellor recommended it. Governing boards are currently free to bypass chancellors.
The measure would bar regents from voting on budgetary and personnel matters if they had not received training on ethics, conflicts of interest and the role of governing boards. It would also limit the voting powers of
appointees nominated by the governor when the Legislature is not in session.
The bill includes a number of passages intended to safeguard campuses, including one declaring that regents “may not unreasonably or unduly interfere with the day-to-day operations.”
The automatic admission bill, SB 1530 by Seliger, is a response to a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court that challenges UT’s consider- ation of race and ethnicity in undergraduate admissions.
Under a 1997 state law, students in the top 10 percent of their Texas high school class are entitled to enroll at any of the state’s 38 public universities. A 2009 modification to that law lets UT cap such students at 75 percent of the university’s freshmen from Texas.
As a result, students have had to rank in the top 8 or 9 percent in recent years to gain automatic admission.
If the Supreme Court bars UT from considering race and ethnicity when filling out the balance of its freshman classes, a clause in the 2009 legislative revision would automatically trigger elimination of the 75 percent cap. Thus, UT would have to admit all top 10 percent applicants. School officials say this would make it difficult to assemble a class with the right mix of talents, interests, economic backgrounds and other characteristics.
Seliger’s bill would retain the 75 percent cap through the 20172018 academic year. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a strong supporter of the 10 percent law, opposes the measure as a retreat on commitment to student body diversity. But Sen. Royce West, DDallas, also a supporter of the law, endorsed the bill, saying he thought UT was “moving in the right direction” on diversity by trying to recruit low-income students and other efforts. Contact Ralph K.M. Haurwitz at 445-3604.