The Iowa House will have a new committee focused on Higher Education in the next legislative session starting on Jan. 13. Iowa House Republicans, who expanded their majority in November, seek to do a “comprehensive review” of higher education and tackle workforce issues.
State Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, has been appointed as the chair of the committee, which will be charged with bringing sweeping reforms to Iowa’s higher education system.
“We have a tremendous amount of work to do in restoring Iowans’ confidence in our institutions, controlling costs, and returning the focus of our higher education system away from ideological agendas, and back to the pursuit of academic excellence,” Collins said in a statement Thursday.
Collins led the legislative charge to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at Iowa’s three regent universities in the last legislative session. Though Collins’s standalone bill on the directives was not passed, he led the charge to amend the Education Appropriation bill last session to include directives from the Iowa Board of Regents into law.
In November 2023, Iowa’s Board of Regents directed Iowa’s regent institutions to restructure their DEI offices to make services available to all students and restructure programs that are not required by federal or state law.
To comply with this directive and the new state law, the University of Iowa has restructured its DEI office, renaming it the Division of Access, Opportunity, and Diversity. Along with renaming the division, the UI eliminated five unfilled positions within the department, the UI is reviewing the 43 department-level DEI officials to ensure their job responsibilities are within the framework of the directives, and the UI is reviewing other university policies and practices to ensure they comply with the directives.
Despite regent universities’ efforts to comply with the law Collins has been a staunch critic of the restructuring saying it does not go far enough.
Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley applauded Collins for his work and said he is eager to see his work now that he will lead a committee focused on reforming state universities. Grassley said that the committee will help battle the workforce crisis the state continues to grapple with.
“Iowa House Republicans have been proactive and innovative in our solutions to address [the workforce crisis], including our efforts to refocus Iowa’s higher education system on producing students ready to fill high-need jobs in our state,” Grassley said in a statement on Thursday. “A comprehensive review of Iowa’s entire higher education system is long overdue.”
State Rep. Jeff Shipley, R-Fairfield, will vice chair the committee.