The increasingly assertive involvement of conservative lawmakers in the affairs of higher education has spurred concerns about “brain drain” — talented scholars choosing to leave their states or not considering employment there. Now, new statistics from a survey of faculty members in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas back up those fears: Two-thirds of respondents said they wouldn’t recommend academic work in their state to colleagues. About a third said they were actively considering employment in another state, while 20 percent have interviewed elsewhere since 2021.
The survey was sponsored by the state conferences of the American Association of University Professors in Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas, along with the United Faculty of Florida and the Texas Faculty Association unions. The results, those organizations say, are proof of widespread dissatisfaction with political incursions into diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and tenure, among other areas. About 80 percent of respondents described their state’s political atmosphere surrounding academe as poor or very poor, and roughly 60 percent said their institution’s administration had not adequately defended academic freedom and tenure in the past two years.
More than 4,200 faculty members across the four states filled out the survey, the results of which were released on Thursday. Salary and the local political climate were the top reasons cited for seeking another job, with concerns about academic freedom, tenure, and DEI work also topping the list. About 30 percent of respondents said they worried about shared governance, LGBTQ+ issues, and reproductive-health and abortion access.
Recent legislative action in Texas and Florida informed those responses, the survey’s organizers told reporters in a preview on Wednesday. In Texas, a bill banning public colleges from having DEI offices or staff and from requiring diversity statements and diversity training, among other measures, takes effect on January 1, 2024. That bill was signed into law in June by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, along with a second measure that empowers governing boards to adopt policies allowing tenured faculty members to be fired for reasons like “professional incompetence” or “conduct involving moral turpitude” and took effect on September 1. In recent months, two high-profile controversies have roiled the Texas A&M University system — the botched hiring of a prominent Black journalist and the suspension of a faculty member accused of making disparaging comments about Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican.
The threat to academic freedom is extreme.
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation prohibiting public institutions from spending money on DEI programming and from offering general-education courses that “distort significant historical events,” teach “identity politics,” or are “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States.” DeSantis, a Republican, also appointed six new trustees to the Board of Trustees at New College of Florida; the board’s subsequent firing of the president and chief diversity officer and efforts to dismantle New College’s gender-studies program have drawn widespread criticism.
Of the four participating states, the largest number of responses — 1,907 — came from Texas. Nineteen percent of surveyed faculty members there said they have interviewed in another state in the last two years, 29 percent said they were actively considering employment in another state, and 63 percent reported that they wouldn’t recommend academic work in their state to colleagues from out-of-state.
Floridians were most pessimistic in their survey answers. Of 642 respondents — not all of whom answered each question — 28 percent have interviewed elsewhere since 2021, 47 percent reported thinking about working in another state, and 86 percent said they wouldn’t recommend their colleagues take a job in Florida.
Scholars in both Florida and Texas described being uncertain about what new state laws allow them to teach. “The vagueness of laws and the lack of case-law precedent means that I have no idea whether what I teach contravenes a law or doesn’t,” a tenured professor in Florida wrote in an open-ended response. “I teach in philosophy and the humanities, and most of my courses deal with questions that are now forbidden to ask. The threat to academic freedom is extreme.” Others in Florida said they’d been told to remove their readings from public syllabi, or that they’d received threats from students about material they were teaching.
“I feel like I could be cut loose for teaching the truth at any time,” a tenured professor in Texas wrote. “I can’t rely on a stable, committed faculty in my department to teach classes and produce quality research fundable by external sources. Despite my commitment to higher education, I know I’m not going to have a future in this career. Too many forces will push me out.”
Meanwhile, the University System of Georgia remains under censure from the national AAUP after the system’s Board of Regents passed changes in post-tenure review that some critics characterized as effectively ending tenure in the state’s public colleges. The AAUP also released a special report in 2022 describing “the influence of the North Carolina state legislature on the systemwide board of governors and campus boards of trustees.”
Though their states haven’t grabbed headlines as frequently as Texas and Florida have in recent months, faculty leaders in North Carolina and Georgia said their concerns are just as grave. In each state, more than half of respondents said they wouldn’t recommend their state as a workplace for colleagues, and more than 30 percent reported they weren’t planning to stay in academe long term. “The threat of legislative curricular interference will force my dept. to create classes that may fundamentally rob me of my instructional autonomy and academic freedom,” wrote one tenured professor in North Carolina. “If that comes to pass, I may find a way to pivot to another position, institution, or industry.”
Trouble Hiring
Institutions’ ability to hire scholars has also taken a hit. About half of respondents reported a decrease in the number of applications they’ve fielded for faculty jobs and that candidates had expressed hesitancy during interviews. More than 45 percent said application quality had gone down, and more than 40 percent said they knew of academics declining job offers at their institution. Roughly 15 percent said they’d observed no impact.
Notably, in Texas, those numbers were similar among faculty members at the state’s private universities, even though the new laws about DEI and tenure do not apply to them. “I heard from a couple of folks from private universities that would be well-regarded nationally, and they were having trouble hiring,” Brian L. Evans, interim president of the Texas AAUP conference, said on Wednesday. “People just didn’t want to come to Texas.”
Many scholars are considering other career options, the survey said: About one-third said they didn’t plan to stay in academe long term. Scholars with tenure — who made up about a third of respondents — wrote in open-ended responses about taking early retirement, while junior scholars said they were worried about their prospects of getting tenure. “They don’t think it’s going to happen for them,” said Matthew Boedy, president of the AAUP’s Georgia conference. “Putting everyone on rolling five-year post-tenure reviews, in which we have to check certain boxes like widgets on a factory conveyor belt or risk termination, fatally undermines” high-quality research, one scholar explained in an open-ended response. “It pushes people to write superficial articles in large quantities to meet short-term requirements rather than actually advance knowledge in the field.”
The top three states scholars said they’d interviewed in since 2021 were California, New York, and Massachusetts, with North Carolina — one of the states targeted in the survey — rounding out the top four.
For many scholars, their state’s broader political climate weighed heavily; Texas respondents, for instance, cited new laws restricting abortion access, transgender minors’ access to gender-affirming treatment, and trans athletes’ ability to participate in intercollegiate athletics.
While the state leaders who organized the survey said they weren’t surprised by the results, they hope having concrete data that confirm their concerns about the state of academe proves useful. “I’m hoping that this survey will work as some sort of defense against any further bills or comments from lawmakers,” Boedy said. “It’s hard for us to play offense,” he added, “but I’m hoping that we could play defense better now.”
