Texas House makes major changes to Senate Bill 18 on tenure guildines during committee meeting
The House of Representatives moved forward Monday with a bill that would cement tenure guidelines in Texas law, opting against the Senate’s version to ban the faculty protection altogether. Republican lawmakers are working against a tight deadline: A final vote must be taken in the House, after which both chambers have to reach an agreement before the end of session next week.
Representatives dramatically altered Senate Bill 18 in committee last week as it faced steep opposition from students and academics. With an 85-59 vote on Monday, the changes satisfied the majority of House lawmakers who worry that a ban on tenure for new faculty would weaken hiring at institutions across the state.Tenure, which is coveted for the job protections it provides, remains standard across the U.S. Democrats who voted against the altered House bill on Monday worried that the new version still leaves too much room for interpretation. Faculty members have testified at length about their fears that the Senate's bill would harm higher education institutions’ ability to remain competitive with top-tier universities and cause professors to lose the decades-observed right to research and teach the topics they choose. “We are risking that success, we are risking that competitive edge, and we are risking our own prestige,” said Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, D-Mesquite. The bill has struggled to gain support in the House in both its original and changed writings. It passed easily in the Senate as a priority bill for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, whopartially on the premise that the job security it affords allows professors to embrace the teaching of “critical race theory.” The House's changes do away with the ban and mandate universities to clearly define how tenure is granted and tenured faculty are evaluated. It also lists the reasons tenured faculty can be fired with"good cause" but gives them due process if the event they are terminated. Some of those reasons include"professional incompetence," criminal convictions that affect their fitness to teach or research, and conduct that involves"moral turpitude" that adversely affects the institution or their performance. Many Texas institutions already have tenure rules similar to what the House is working to adopt, including the University of Houston, which“I don’t believe we are weakening the program,” said Higher Education Committee Chair and Rep. John Keumpel, R-Seguin. “It’s not going to change them much from what they’re doing right now.”
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