DES MOINES — Iowa Republican lawmakers are eyeing a “comprehensive review” of the state’s higher education system, including the state’s three regent-controlled universities.
A newly formed Iowa House Higher Education Committee, chaired by Iowa Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, was formed at the opening of this session, indicating Iowa lawmakers are taking a heavier hand in governing Iowa’s higher education system, including universities governed by the Iowa Board of Regents.
The new committee comes as Republican controlled states and President Donald Trump’s administration criticize higher education and aim to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in academia — action Iowa has already undertaken.
The committee has yet to see regulation referred in the first week of the Iowa legislative session, which gaveled in on Jan. 13. However, the committee has a large scope and is expected to undertake significant reforms this session.
House Speaker Pat Grassley is charging the committee with not only a review of higher education, but also refocusing state universities to address workforce issues in the state.
“A comprehensive review of our entire higher education system is long overdue,” Grassley said in his opening remarks on the first day of the legislative session last week. “Taxpayer investment must be met with taxpayer return. I look forward to this committee’s review of how state dollars can best be used to address workforce shortages and not enforce ideological agendas.”
Collins declined an interview with The Daily Iowan and instead pointed to his opening remarks at the House Higher Education Committee’s first meeting last week.
In his opening remarks, Collins laid out a generalized laundry list of goals the committee will look to accomplish over the next two-year term.
Some of his priorities include increasing intellectual diversity on college campuses, increasing transparency in regent-controlled universities, controlling costs, reforming regent universities’ core curriculum, and reviewing regent universities’ academic programs to align with the state’s workforce needs.
“Last year, this chamber took the first step in reforming our higher education system by getting rid of the identity politics that inserted itself in our higher education system,” Collins said, referring to anti-DEI legislation inserted into the Education Appropriations bill last session that Collins championed. “I want to be clear, the only three-letter acronyms this committee will be focused on over the next general assembly will be MEI. That is merit, excellence, and intelligence.”
Ranking member on the House Higher Education Iowa Rep. Ross Wilburn, D-Ames, said he hopes the committee will focus on creating more opportunity and improving universities, not cutting programs that are not necessarily the top workforce needs in the state but still provide value to the state.
“They talked about a comprehensive review, fair enough, but I still think the focus should be how can we lift up [students], create opportunity, remove any barriers to education,” Wilburn told the DI. “What can we do as legislators to really push high-quality education opportunities to meet the job needs of the state?”
Wilburn also said he hopes Republican lawmakers make the committee’s scope even more clear so Iowans can understand the reforms that might be made and advocate for specific changes.
“I just think it’s important if you’re going to set up a new standing committee that you really give some thought and fulfill the responsibility to explain to the public what it’s going to do,” Wilburn said.
Prior to Collins’ appointment to chair of the newly formed committee, he was a vocal opponent of DEI initiatives in state universities and has continually criticized Iowa’s regent universities for their compliance to the law and the Iowa Board of Regents’ codified directives.
However, Collins said he does not plan to move forward with additional anti-DEI legislation this session. Instead, he said other legislation including a review of administrative costs, reviewing academic programs, and “protecting taxpayers investments” are key priorities for this session.
While Iowa lawmakers move forward with a comprehensive review of higher education, national headwinds show they are not alone in their heavier hand in state universities.
Higher education reforms reflect national trends
At the federal level, Republicans have attempted to make reforms to the country’s higher education system. House Republicans introduced a bill last year that would have made significant reforms to student loans, pell grants, and financing for universities dependent on federal aid.
Trump and Republicans in the House and Senate have vowed to root out DEI programs in colleges, with Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education Linda McMahon vowing to work with lawmakers to root out these initiatives.
Republican-controlled states across the U.S. have also looked to root out DEI programs. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, 14 Republican-led states have signed anti-DEI legislation into law, and 86 bills have been introduced, including in Congress, to eliminate DEI programs.
Adrien Halliez, a political science professor at Drake University, said conservatives have linked higher education institutions among others, to a left-leaning bias, fueling a push for reform.
“I think conservative culture managed to link together, in public opinion, the idea that basically three elements — universities, Hollywood, and the bureaucracy — I think that idea is ingrained that it has a strong left bias,” Halliez said. “That’s why there’s a little bit of traction behind what they’re trying to do right now.”
According to a study published in the Independent Institute, a right-leaning think tank based in California, bias among academics has shifted to the left in the past few decades with 60 percent of professors identifying as liberal.
Increasing intellectual diversity on campuses
While Collins previously championed laws to eliminate DEI programs from Iowa’s college campuses, he said this session he aims to increase intellectual diversity on college campuses around the state through legislation this session.
Wilburn said Collins’ aim to increase intellectual diversity might be missing the mark because he believes all kinds of diversity are important.
“That’s all part of diversity,” Wilburn said. “He has a misunderstanding of the intent of diversity. We just disagree on that. Certainly, of the importance that diversity offers, whether that’s rural, urban, whether it’s old or younger, whether it’s by gender, whether it’s by race, it’s all important.”
Cary Stough, the president of the Coalition to Organize Graduate Students at the UI, said he credits DEI programs aimed at rural students for his entrance to higher education.
“I attribute my being able to be in this high academic space from diversity, equity, and inclusion,” Stough said. “I think that’s the only way that the ivory tower has opened up to people like me, and it’s not necessarily, as they would claim, a waste of money, but a proven investment in all students from all different backgrounds.”
While national trends point toward a growing conservative movement wanting reforms for higher education, Iowa has already made reforms with anti-DEI legislation. Iowa Republicans expressed a clear desire for reforms with the creation of a new standing committee focused on higher education.
Collins told Iowa Public Radio in November that members of the House Republican caucus, “are passionate about reforming our system and making sure that we’re not wasting taxpayer money on initiatives or agendas that do not benefit Iowans.”
Committee aims to review degree programs
Collins said another priority for the committee will be reviewing academic programs offered by universities to ensure they align with the state’s workforce needs. He also said he is looking to reform the regent universities’ core curriculum.
His desire to review the academic programs offered by regent-controlled universities, like the UI, comes as he criticizes the university’s development of a new school of School of Social and Cultural Analysis.
The new school combines the Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies program with other cultural analysis departments at the UI.
“Iowans expect our institutions of higher education to be focused on providing for the workforce needs of the state, not programs that are focused on peddling ideological agendas,” Collins wrote in a letter to the UI, co-written by Iowa Sen. Lynn Evans, R-Aurelia, who chairs the Senate Education Committee.
Wilburn said he hopes Collins will bring educators to the table when looking to reform academic programs and curricula, but he thinks there is certainly room for improvement in a broad sense.
“It’s important to allow some flexibility for the jobs of the future and professions of the future that we don’t know exist yet, and we don’t want to have Iowa behind the curve of other states that allow that academic freedom to happen,” Wilburn said.
RELATED: UI to restructure, rename DEI Office to Division of Access, Opportunity, and Diversity
Chris Martin, the union representative for the University of Northern Iowa’s faculty union, said looking into what degree programs the universities are offering will end up hurting workforce readiness. Martin said it will put the state behind workforce needs by years if they’re waiting to see needs before creating a program.
“I think it’s a little bit of micromanaging happening there,” Martin said. “I think it’s the job of the university administrations and faculty to look at what programs are working and not working.”
The letter is not the first criticism Collins has levied against state universities attempting to comply with the anti-DEI legislation he championed last session, which goes into effect in July.
While Collins has said no new DEI legislation is expected this session, he is likely to take a leading role in ensuring compliance with the law meets the guidelines set out in law. Instead, Collins said the committee will focus on other reforms to the state’s higher education system.
Higher education facing ‘a crisis of confidence’
Collins, in his opening remarks to the House Higher Education Committee, said the committee was necessitated by a need to restore Iowans’ confidence in higher education.
The House has only had a higher education committee once before, which was formed in 1971 after U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War led to anti-war protests disrupting college campuses across the nation.
“I think it’s important to note that the last time there was a higher education [committee] was over 50 years ago, in 1971 — a time when our campuses were in chaos, and it had reached the level of crisis,” Collins said last week. “Today, our higher education system faces a similar crisis, that is, a crisis of confidence.”
Collins said there is a need to refocus universities from “ideological agendas and back to the pursuit of academic excellence.”
However, Martin said universities never left the pursuit of academic excellence, and lawmakers’ plans sound instead like replacing one ideology with another.
“The legislature certainly has the right and expectations from citizens to do a review of any kind of state-funded program,” Martin said. “So, I think that’s fine, but they shouldn’t approach that with any kind of predetermined conclusions.”
Stough said graduate students are given the freedom to study any side of the ideological spectrum they choose, and Collins’ rhetoric is limiting academic freedom by insinuating that the inverse is happening in state universities.
“Being labeled as a proponent of just one ideology is confusing and doesn’t necessarily mirror our reality at all,” Stough said. “It is disappointing, and it does add pressure on us as researchers and as educators to where, even though we do feel supported in our academic freedom, rhetoric such as Collins’ and others in the state makes us question the limits of what we’ve been given.”