{"id":267929,"date":"2026-04-27T07:36:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T07:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/267929\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T07:36:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T07:36:07","slug":"accreditor-mum-as-texas-politicians-take-curricular-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/267929\/","title":{"rendered":"Accreditor Mum as Texas Politicians Take Curricular Control"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent months, two of the biggest Texas public university systems\u2014Texas A&M and Texas Tech Universities\u2014passed comprehensive restrictions<\/a> on how faculty can teach about gender, sexuality and race. Faculty at both institutions, as well as free speech advocates nationwide, have decried the new policies as gross violations of academic freedom. <\/p>\n

But those seeking to fight against the state-mandated changes can\u2019t turn to the federal government for help\u2014leaders at both institutions have cited federal rules and executive orders as justification for their decisions. And as of now, the accreditor overseeing the Texas institutions doesn\u2019t appear likely to step in.<\/p>\n

Accreditors are tasked with ensuring that universities maintain fiduciary responsibility, good student outcomes, academic quality and effective governance. To earn their stamp of approval\u2014which is required for an institution\u2019s students to be eligible for federal financial aid\u2014universities must adhere to the accreditor\u2019s standards. Both Texas A&M and Texas Tech are accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, which requires that faculty must have primary responsibility for the \u201ccontent, quality and effectiveness\u201d of the curriculum. These new policies, handed down by systems\u2019 governor-appointed boards, appear to violate that standard, experts say. But SACS hasn\u2019t taken any action in response. <\/p>\n

The association has no current sanctions or open investigations into Texas A&M or Texas Tech, said Stephen Pruitt, president of the association. He also said the accreditor hasn\u2019t received any complaints about either university, including from faculty. Both institutions are in good standing\u2014Texas Tech\u2019s accreditation was renewed in 2025 for another 10 years. The higher education watchdog is limited in its ability to respond to the curricular policies because it cannot require its member institutions to adhere to a standard that would force them to violate state law or policy, Pruitt said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have always made it a practice that we don\u2019t hold institutions accountable when there\u2019s a state law that may [contradict] our standards,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the end of the day, states rule the day.\u201d <\/p>\n

The presidents of both Texas Tech\u2019s and Texas A&M\u2019s American Association of University Professors chapters said they are considering filing complaints in the coming months. If they do submit a complaint, SACS would be required to investigate it, said Antoinette Flores, director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a left-leaning think tank. That said, she\u2019s not optimistic that a faculty complaint would yield any action from the accreditor. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf they are already taking the position that this is a state law, then I think they are probably unlikely to take it as a serious issue,\u201d Flores said. <\/p>\n

Mike Gavin<\/a>, president and CEO of the Alliance for Higher Education, has also heard accreditors describe their power as limited within the bounds of state law. But the policies barring instruction on gender and sexuality go \u201cway beyond\u201d what Texas law requires and \u201c[violate] academic freedom in the process,\u201d he said. Ten years ago, SACS\u2019 inaction on these issues \u201cwould have shocked me,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n

SACS doesn\u2019t need to receive a complaint to investigate. Reports in the media, of which there have been many, are enough to prompt a probe, Flores said. Pruitt\u2019s explanation that the accreditor can\u2019t act against state law is \u201ctypical in the moment that we are in,\u201d said Flores. But \u201cit is not typical historically.\u201d<\/p>\n

SACS v. the Southern States<\/p>\n

SACS has intervened in the past when one of its institutions was threatened by political interference. For example, in 1930, former Mississippi governor Theodore Bilbo instructed the presidents of several Mississippi public institutions to fire 179 faculty members<\/a> and replace them with his political allies. He also fired the presidents of the three of the public universities: the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State College for Women and Mississippi A&M (which is now Mississippi State University). In response, SACS suspended degrees<\/a> from all four state universities until 1932. <\/p>\n

The accreditor has also intervened in Texas before. SACS placed the University of Texas on probation<\/a> in 1945 amid a dispute between the board and then-president Homer Price Rainey, citing concerns about \u201cundue influence\u201d by the board into the administration. The university remained on probation until SACS was assured of \u201cfull observance of its principles and standards.\u201d <\/p>\n

More recently, SACS\u2019s attempt to protect academic freedom in Florida was met with pushback from Republican state politicians. The association sent two requests for information in 2022; one went to Florida State University while investigating a potential conflict of interest when it considered Richard Corcoran<\/a>, then a member of the system Board of Governors, in its presidential search. The second went to the University of Florida after the institution barred three professors from testifying against state voting rights restrictions. <\/p>\n

Neither probe led to a formal sanction, but Florida Republican legislators railed against the accreditor; Gov. Ron DeSantis called SACS and others<\/a> a \u201cmonopoly of the woke accreditation cartels.\u201d Florida lawmakers soon after passed a bill<\/a> requiring all public institutions to change accreditors every six years, effectively kicking SACS out of the state and paving the way for the new Commission for Public Higher Education<\/a>. North Carolina did the same a year later<\/a>. And Texas is on its way; Senate Bill 530, passed and enacted last year, opened up accreditation options in the state and removed SACS as the default accreditor for Texas public institutions. Legislative threats like this one could make it difficult for accreditors to act contrary to the wishes of state politicians, Flores said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore and more states are legislating very specific issues that get into faculty governance or institutional autonomy, and accreditors are walking back and not challenging things that they might have otherwise,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

From Colleagues to Competitors<\/p>\n

In addition to ducking increased political scrutiny, accreditors have another incentive to acquiesce to states: competition, Gavin said. Ever since the first Trump administration dissolved the regional boundaries among the seven major accrediting bodies\u2014one of which is SACS\u2014they\u2019ve been in competition with one another for dues-paying member institutions. Pruitt said he\u2019s asked all the time whether competition from other accreditors is a concern for him. He says it\u2019s not. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have no problem with competition. What I have problems with is when we allow competition to get us into a race to the bottom,\u201d Pruitt said. \u201cThere\u2019s two ways that happens. One way is that accreditors lower their standards to a point where anybody can be accredited with no assurance of quality to the students or parents. And the other way is for an institution to decide, \u2018We don\u2019t want anybody to measure our quality. We just want to hit the easy button and do as little work as possible.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican politicians seeking to bring accreditors to heel are relying on dues dependency to achieve their goals, Gavin said. State legislators are \u201ccontinuously just using money as a weapon to ideologically control the sector.\u201d <\/p>\n

To avoid that race to the bottom, accreditors should stick to their guns, Flores explained. <\/p>\n

\u201cState laws are going to be in conflict with each other. It makes it hard to create a standard that can be applied across a variety of states,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat really should be the case is that accreditors set their standards and institutions either meet them or they don\u2019t. If the state doesn\u2019t like a particular standard or it violates a state law, those institutions should then find a new accrediting agency.\u201d<\/p>\n

SACS is currently revising its accreditation standards, and there has been \u201cpretty heavy and lively conversation around everything,\u201d including standards related to academic freedom, Pruitt said. The association aims to post a draft of the new standards in May and will seek public feedback. Its board will approve a final version of the new standards in December.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be the organization that says yes to innovation,\u201d Pruitt said. \u201cBut we won\u2019t say yes to anything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In recent months, two of the biggest Texas public university systems\u2014Texas A&M and Texas Tech Universities\u2014passed comprehensive restrictions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4144,163,64,8894,2184,223,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-267929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-career","tag-education","tag-events","tag-higher","tag-jobs","tag-news","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}