This State’s Public Universities Must Overhaul Academic Programs or Lose Millions in Funding By Maya Stahl March 26, 2025 Republican lawmakers recently cut millions of dollars in funding for Utah’s eight public universities. To get it back, universities will have to overhaul their academic programs by considering eliminations of majors, jobs, and more.
While lawmakers across the country have set conditions for colleges to receive money before — often via performance-based funding, which makes part of campus budgets contingent on student outcomes rather than enrollment — the use of academic-program review as leverage is a new strategy.
In late January, Utah’s Legislature and Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, cut $60 million in funding for public higher education. Then lawmakers passed House Bill 265, which spells out how universities can restore the funding: by presenting plans to reallocate money toward work force-focused degrees and away from other disciplines. The bill also directs universities to consider restructuring or eliminating dean positions and other administrative roles. It will go into effect once signed by the governor or on May 7, according to the legislation.
Rep. Karen Peterson, a Republican and sponsor of HB 265, said in a statement to The Chronicle that the move is necessary to tie universities’ programs more closely to work-force needs.
On Thursday, under the assumption that HB 265 will soon become law, Utah’s commissioner of higher education plans to present guidance to the state’s Board of Higher Education on how universities should craft plans for reallocating the money.
“I think it’s naïve to say that this won’t be a difficult, painful process. I think it will be,” Geoff Landward, the commissioner, said in an interview.
Faculty members across Utah have been outspoken opponents of the bill, saying that the Legislature is meddling in the curriculum and taking punitive measures that will harm their institutions.
Using legislation to force colleges to cut certain programs is “a very slippery slope,” said Kate McConnell, vice president for curricular and pedagogical innovation at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U).
“The biggest risk, in my mind, is that this blunt instrument of 'you’re going to do this and teach it this way or teach this content,’ eliminates the very strength of what the American higher-education system offers, which is diversity, and diversity of mission and institutional type, to meet the needs of their very specific students,” McConnell said.
Immediate Impacts In anticipation of HB 265 taking effect, some of Utah’s public-university presidents have already announced initial plans to cut programs and restructure administrative offices.
Weber State University, which lost $6.7 million under the state’s budget cut, is winding down the College of Education as a standalone unit. The institution will not fill the college’s open dean position, and its academic programming “will find homes elsewhere on campus,” according to a spokesperson. Current students will be able to complete their degrees.
“In light of HB 265, Weber State has to make tough decisions about programs and positions across the university, but it’s also giving us an opportunity to look at the way we operate and reimagine ourselves better in the future,” a university spokesperson, Brian Magaña, wrote in a statement to The Chronicle.
This month, Alan Smith, Utah State University’s interim president, announced a plan to offer employees a voluntary separation incentive program before “considering other actions” like layoffs and operational reductions. Utah State will lose $4.8 million under the state’s cuts.
“Developing and implementing the strategic reinvestment plan will mean difficult decisions and significant changes in some areas of our university,” Smith wrote.
The legislation suggests that the state’s universities are failing to prepare students for the work force, faculty members and experts said — but doesn’t acknowledge how they prepare students for life after graduation, both professionally and personally.
“Every college student, regardless of whether they’re at a very selective liberal-arts institution or a community college, every college student is going to college to quote, unquote get a job,” said McConnell, at AAC&U.
What’s more, Utah’s universities already do their own reviews of academic programs, professors said.
Richard Preiss, president-elect of the University of Utah’s Academic Senate, said the state’s universities “already self-regulate and audit their programs.”
“We’re happy to comply with the law and use it as an opportunity to do what we do better, but we just would love it if our legislators took more care to understand how the system already worked,” Preiss said.
Brianne Kramer, president of the American Federation of Teachers chapter at Southern Utah University, said her institution already evaluates academic programs every seven years. She said that rural, regional institutions like Southern Utah are “very tapped into what their community needs,” and that the budget cuts may prevent institutions from meeting those needs.
“Legislators are not listening to their constituents. They are not listening to the people who are making decisions and see these things happening firsthand in institutions, which are faculty, staff, students, and even administrators as well,” Kramer said.
Utah isn’t the only state taking such steps. In Iowa, House File 420, the “Workforce First Act,” would require the Iowa Board of Regents to review all undergraduate- and graduate-degree programs at the state’s three public universities “to determine whether and to what extent each academic program aligns with current and future workforce needs.”
Unlike Utah, Iowa lawmakers have not made preemptive budget cuts, and the academic-program-review mandate hasn’t yet passed out of the Legislature. The Iowa board has agreed to do a sweeping review anyway.
Iowa’s board will, in consultation with institutions, evaluate how all of the state’s programs “fit with high-demand jobs and workforce needs,” according to Josh Lehman, the board’s senior communications director. The review will be completed and presented publicly no later than the board’s November 2025 meeting, Lehman said.
'Unintended Consequences’ While it’s unusual for legislatures to step into academic-program review, the process is a routine part of higher education. These days, colleges are more often using such reviews to make difficult decisions in a tough financial climate.
Some consultants who work with higher-education institutions say such reviews are not only good for colleges, but necessary.
“Regardless of whether it’s mandated by a legislature or not, it’s probably a best practice to increase your institutional performance and to demonstrate to the students and communities you serve, the value of a degree,” said Chuck Ambrose, a senior education consultant at Husch Blackwell and a former college president.
Sid Phillips, chief growth officer at Hanover Research Group, an education research and consulting firm, advises colleges to ensure programs will attract prospective students and set students up for success after graduation. That’s increasingly important, Phillips said, because “there is more and more scrutiny around the value of a higher-education degree.”
In Utah, each institution’s strategic reinvestment plan must be based on criteria such as high enrollment and completion rates, and demonstrated professional outcomes such as placement, employment, licensure, and salary data for graduates.
Analyzing and compiling data on these benchmarks is typical for colleges as they evaluate academic offerings. Normally, however, millions in funding is not at stake.
When Landward, the Utah commissioner of higher education, goes before the Board of Higher Education on Thursday, he’ll present a data dashboard that universities can use as a resource to craft their restructuring plans. The information will include graduation and enrollment rates and wage outcomes for each degree program. The institutions, as well as Landward’s office, will also be examining how each program’s curriculum was developed.
“We’re trying to develop this guidance with enough discretion and flexibility for schools to just put together plans that work for their particular mission, role, their particular student body, but also meet the expectations of the Legislature,” Landward said.
Cox, Utah’s governor, recently signed another bill into law that’s aimed at universities’ academic offerings — specifically focused on general education. Senate Bill 334 establishes a “Center for Civic Excellence” pilot program at Utah State University. The bill also directs the state’s public universities to require students to take gen-ed courses that engage with texts “predominantly from Western civilizations” and focused “on the founding principles of American government, economics, and history.” The law goes into effect on May 7.
Lawmakers in Iowa have also introduced a gen-ed-focused bill mandating courses “concerning Western heritage” and “American heritage.”
When it comes to what colleges teach, Ambrose said, “it’s really not the legislature’s job to make those decisions. They’re in place to allocate the resources to hold you accountable to those funds.”
McConnell, of AAC&U, described a potential “law of unintended consequences” as a result of legislation that cuts funding to higher education.
“It’s very easy to dismantle and tear apart. It’s much harder to rebuild,” McConnell said. “And the fiscal costs of getting rid of something, chopping it, and then realizing we made a mistake there, and we have to rebuild this, are much higher than working to make legitimate, robust improvements within an existing framework.”
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