In approving a new state budget late last week, Indiana lawmakers also gave the green light to several measures that would dramatically change public higher education in the state. Those additions, made at the 11th hour, include a post-tenure review process that measures productivity, guidance that makes faculty-governance groups “advisory only,” and a provision that gives the governor sole power to appoint trustees at Indiana University at Bloomington.
The quick turnaround between those measures being introduced Wednesday evening and the budget vote early Friday morning left no time for faculty input or public comment, professors said. “No one saw it coming,” said James Gustafson, an associate professor of history and chair of the Faculty Senate at Indiana State University.
Rep. Jeffrey Thompson, a Republican and the budget’s lead author, was not available for an interview before publication. Gov. Mike Braun is expected to sign it.
On top of the bill’s laundry list of higher-education reforms, public colleges face a 5-percent cut to their budgets and must review their degree programs every seven years. The bill also requires public colleges to gain approval from the state higher-education commission to continue any program that fails to have a minimum number of graduates that is listed in the bill. For example, bachelor’s-degree programs must, on average, graduate at least 15 students in the next three years to avoid that scrutiny.
The budget would give Braun, a Republican, authority to appoint all nine members of the Indiana University Board of Trustees. Currently, three positions are elected by alumni of the university.
Vivian Winston, an alumni-elected trustee who recently announced she would not seek reelection for her seat, said that the provision surprised her. “This eliminates any chance for the alumni to have any kind of word on the board,” Winston said. She added that it subjects the board to potential political sway.
“If Governor Braun begins appointing trustees who are much more activist and interventionist in favor of a particular political vision of education, that will obviously be problematic,” said Steve Sanders, a professor of law at Indiana University.
Alumni-elected trustees have dissented from the rest of the board and been critical of Pamela Whitten, the Indiana University president, in the past, Sanders said. “There’s a pattern of friction there,” he said. Last year, Winston disagreed with the board’s supportive statement of Whitten after a faculty vote of no confidence and voted against the board’s controversial expressive-activity policy. Most recently, she was the lone dissenter on a vote to extend Whitten’s contract and offer her a raise.
Heather Akou, an associate professor of fashion design at Indiana University and president-elect of the Bloomington Faculty Council, said that the alumni-elected members are often the only ones to vote against the majority or raise public concerns. “With nine out of nine members appointed by the governor, I just can’t imagine how that’s going to make the situation better — they truly will have no reason at all to listen to the faculty or students or alumni.”
Braun told Axios last week that he wanted to change how Indiana University appoints trustees because he wants a board “that’s going to produce better results.”
The budget redefines another aspect of university governance, stating that the actions taken by faculty-governance organizations must be “advisory only.”
Gustafson, the Indiana State history professor, said the Faculty Senate’s role is already largely advisory because new policies can not go before the board without the administration’s approval. He said it was too early to know how the new measure would change the Faculty Senate’s operations, and its members were seeking guidance from Indiana State’s general counsel on how to comply.
Akou said that the Bloomington Faculty Council was also largely advisory but that codifying the expectation diminishes shared governance. “Shared governance always depended on the will of the Board of Trustees and the president to listen and to accept reciprocal power sharing and accountability. Now, state law essentially says that balance is over. It is only advisory. There does not have to be any listening.”
University Senate leaders at Purdue University at West Lafayette plan to meet with the provost next week to understand how the language will be implemented, said Susan South, a professor of psychological sciences and chair of the University Senate.
The bill mandates that post-tenure reviews assess productivity — including the number of courses and students taught, time spent on instructional assignments and overseeing graduate students, and the overall “research and creative scholarship productivity” of a faculty member. “If productivity requirements established by the institution are not met,” then the offending professor would be placed on probation, which could result in dismissal.
Senate Bill 202, a law passed last year aimed at improving “intellectual diversity” on campuses, established post-tenure reviews at all Indiana public colleges, requiring professors to demonstrate how they “foster a culture of free inquiry” in their classroom, among other things.
The budget bill stops short of listing a specific number of students or courses a faculty member should teach. How the blanks are filled will determine whether tenure protections are weakened, said Akou. “Will the faculty and the Bloomington Faculty Council be given an opportunity to decide what those standards for productivity should look like? Will there be some consideration of the vast differences between, say, a scientist compared to a humanist compared to a performing artist? Their types of productivity look vastly different.”
While reading the budget, Akou felt like some lawmakers misunderstand what professors do. “There is this building sentiment that professors are lazy and incompetent and parasites on society that are taking the state’s money, not giving anything in return, and causing problems that are so dire that they need to be solved through lawmaking in the middle of the night,” Akou said.
Gustafson said it’s too early to know exactly how the new budget measures will affect his campus but that by comparing the legislature’s move to conservative efforts to reshape higher education in other states, “it seems that we’re on track towards more legislative control over higher education.”
