Tuesday was a packed day for education, with a third hearing of note for our members happening in the House Higher Education Committee. Committee members continued their discussion from last week’s hearing on tailoring programs to meet workforce demands. Invited witnesses from the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative (the Texas Education Agency, The Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the Texas Workforce Commission), the Texas Healthcare Workforce Task Force, and the Texas Health Improvement Network reported on identifying and supporting credentials of value to fix the shortage in health care workers and technical careers.
Dual credit was also discussed extensively, highlighting the success and importance of expanding dual-credit access for K-12 students. The invited commissioners outlined necessary legislative support and collaborative efforts between technical colleges, community colleges, and high schools to ensure students gain relevant, job-ready credentials that align with the state’s workforce demands.
The most notable news from this week’s hearing was a conversation on protecting research, sparked by Chairman Terry Wilson. After Texas Tech University System Chancellor Tedd Mitchell completed his testimony, Chairman Wilson commented, “When you’re a Tier 1 university, what you research matters.”
Rep. Tony Tinderholt continued the discussion, asking, “What types of things do we do that harm your chances of getting research? Because we’re going to pass laws this session, and the things we do can directly affect you getting these research projects. The reason I ask is because the chairman and I were talking, and what we need to do as a committee is make sure the things we want to do for higher education don’t harm these types of things. Sometimes we’ll pass laws that have second and third orders of effect we’re not aware of. There are unintended consequences.”
Chairman Wilson’s final comments in the discussion were powerful and homed in on the main issue facing Texas higher education in this moment: the downstream effects from last session’s anti-”DEI” bill, Senate Bill 17, and specifically the barriers it created for our top-tier research universities to receive research grants.
“But still and yet, what we do is we have unintended consequences when we use our universities as a political grandstand to a point that we’re not also acknowledging the value that they bring and their participation within the manufacturing industries, their participation in the National Science Foundation, and so forth,” Wilson said. “The knee-jerk reactions of politicians essentially impact the type of research faculty we get, or need to get, to compete within that research … That could potentially mean that their source selection is going to look elsewhere other than Texas, or our Tier 1 institutions where they may best be suited. Unfortunately, it is a crisis by our own doing. While I appreciate the legislation that was looked at last session, we’ve got to make sure we don’t let the train fall off the tracks.”