What the 2027 Rankings Do—and Do Not—Tell Us about Texas Higher Education, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

What the 2027 Rankings Do—and Do Not—Tell Us about Texas Higher Education

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

October 22, 2026

The newly released U.S. News & World Report rankings deserve more scrutiny than the usual horse-race coverage of who moved up and who moved down. The headline is that six Texas universities remain among the nation's top 100. But underneath that relatively reassuring news is a striking pattern of decline among a number of the state's public universities—and particularly among institutions in the University of Texas System (Wilhelm, 2026).

UT Austin fell from No. 30 to No. 34 nationally. Texas A&M dropped eight places, from No. 51 to No. 59. Outside the top 100, UT Dallas fell 11 places, UT San Antonio and UT Arlington each fell 14, UT Rio Grande Valley fell 37, Texas State fell 31, UT Tyler fell 13, and the University of Houston–Clear Lake fell 35 (Wilhelm, 2026).

The UT System pattern in particular merits attention. Every UT System institution singled out in this article for year-to-year movement declined: Austin by four places, Dallas by 11, San Antonio by 14, Arlington by 14, Rio Grande Valley by 37, and Tyler by 13. That does not establish that something systemwide caused these declines. Texas Tech, Prairie View A&M, and Texas A&M–Kingsville, for example, moved upward, so there is no uniform “Texas effect” (Wilhelm, 2026). But when several institutions operating under the same system and state policy environment move downward simultaneously, it is reasonable to notice the pattern and watch whether it persists.

At the same time, we should be very careful about what these rankings actually measure. A university's ordinal position is not the equivalent of a report card. UT Austin did not suddenly become "four places worse" as a university. Rankings are relative: an institution can improve on important measures and still fall because other universities improve faster, because institutions enter or leave its comparison group, or because the ranking formula itself changes.

And the formula did change this year.

For the 2027 rankings, U.S. News replaced graduate indebtedness with a new "earnings by major" measure worth 5 percent of the score and began using the updated 2025 Carnegie classifications (Baity, 2026; U.S. News & World Report, L.P., 2026). More broadly, student outcomes account for about 52 percent of the U.S. News formula, while academic peer assessment alone accounts for another 20 percent; faculty and financial resources, standardized test scores, and research measures make up much of the remainder (Baity, 2026).

That context makes UT Austin’s decline especially interesting. The university itself reports that freshman applications reached a record 98,841 this year, its four-year graduation rate rose to a record 77.7 percent, and it awarded a record 16,801 degrees during 2025–26 (University of Texas at Austin, 2026). UT also remains the No. 1 public university in Texas and No. 8 among public universities nationally according to these same U.S. News rankings (University of Texas at Austin, 2026; Wilhelm, 2026). In other words, the four-place decline in the overall ranking coexists with several indicators of very strong institutional performance. That alone should caution us against interpreting No. 34 rather than No. 30 as evidence of a four-step deterioration in educational quality.

UTRGV offers an even more dramatic lesson about the limitations of composite rankings. Its overall national ranking fell an eye-catching 37 places to No. 250 (Wilhelm, 2026). Yet in the very same 2027 rankings, UTRGV climbed 30 places to No. 26 nationally for social mobility and tied for No. 1 among Texas public universities on that measure (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, 2026). Which ranking tells us what UTRGV actually contributes to higher education? 

For an institution whose mission centrally involves expanding opportunity in one of the nation's most economically challenged regions, its performance in graduating Pell Grant students arguably tells us something that its position in a single national prestige hierarchy cannot. The U.S. News social mobility measure specifically assesses institutions’ success in enrolling and graduating students who receive Pell Grants (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, 2026).

This is why rankings are never neutral descriptions of "quality." They embody decisions about what counts. Is a great university one whose graduates command high salaries? One with highly paid faculty and abundant financial resources? One highly regarded by other university presidents and provosts? One that produces research? One that enrolls economically disadvantaged students and actually gets them to graduation? 

U.S. News combines these different purposes into a single number using a weighted set of student-outcome, peer-assessment, faculty-resource, financial-resource, research, and other measures (Baity, 2026). The ranking then asks us to believe that No. 34 meaningfully distinguishes an institution from No. 30—or even from the seven universities tied with UT at No. 34. The ranking gives us a precise number, but not necessarily a precise measure of educational quality.

Still, I would not dismiss the Texas declines. Rankings matter precisely because people believe they matter. Prospective students see them. Parents see them. Legislators and governing boards cite them. Potential faculty recruits see them. University leaders use them in fundraising and institutional branding. And because 20 percent of the U.S. News score comes from peer assessment, reputation itself becomes part of the ranking calculation (Baity, 2026). A deterioration in how academic leaders elsewhere perceive an institution can therefore eventually become measurable even when its graduation rates and research productivity remain strong.

That point bears watching in Texas. A recent 2026 Faculty in the South survey drew responses from 1,023 Texas faculty members; about 35 percent said they planned to seek employment outside Texas in the coming hiring cycle, and roughly 70 percent said they would not encourage graduate students or faculty colleagues to seek employment in the state (Surjadi, 2026). Because this was a voluntary survey rather than a representative sample of all Texas professors, those figures should not be treated as population estimates. The survey was distributed through email and social media, with invitations sent to more than 85,000 addresses across participating states (Boedy, 2026). But the results are meaningful evidence of faculty sentiment and of potential recruitment and retention problems that universities should take seriously.

We should therefore resist a tempting but premature conclusion: the 2027 rankings do not prove that recent changes in Texas higher education caused UT Austin or other Texas universities to fall. Much of the information entering these rankings is necessarily retrospective. The new earnings measure, for example, looks at graduates’ earnings four years after graduation (U.S. News & World Report, L.P., 2026). Policies and institutional decisions made in 2025 or 2026 therefore cannot plausibly explain many of the outcome measures appearing in a ranking released in September 2026.

The more important question is prospective: What happens to these universities over the next five years?

If Texas universities become less successful at recruiting and retaining distinguished faculty; if institutional reputation among academic peers weakens; if research capacity deteriorates; if students increasingly choose institutions elsewhere; or if the academic breadth of universities is narrowed, those effects will eventually appear somewhere—in research productivity, faculty resources, graduate programs, peer assessments, student demand, or other measures of institutional quality.

That is why UT Austin’s movement from No. 30 to No. 34 should neither be sensationalized nor waved away. One year's ranking is a data point, not a verdict. But alongside substantial declines at a number of other Texas public institutions—and particularly the cluster of declines across UT System campuses—it is a data point worth remembering (Wilhelm, 2026).

The real test will not be where Texas universities stand in one magazine's rankings this September. It will be whether, five or ten years from now, they remain places where exceptional faculty want to work, talented students want to study, consequential research can flourish, and universities possess the intellectual breadth and institutional conditions necessary to fulfill their public mission.

References

Baity, C. (2026, September 22). ECU once again named among nation’s best colleges. East Carolina University. https://news.ecu.edu/2026/09/22/ecu-once-again-named-among-nations-best-colleges/

Boedy, M. (2026, September 10). Results from the 2026 Faculty in the South Survey. Academe Blog. https://academeblog.org/2026/09/10/results-from-the-2026-faculty-in-the-south-survey/

Surjadi, M. (2026, September 14). More professors want to leave Texas this year, citing political climate, censorship, survey says. The Dallas Morning News. https://www.yahoo.com/news/videos/more-professors-want-leave-texas-124335563.html

University of Texas at Austin. (2026, September 22). UT sets academic performance records, remains the No. 1 public university in Texas. UT News. https://news.utexas.edu/2026/09/22/ut-sets-academic-performance-records-remains-the-no-1-public-university-in-texas/

University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. (2026, September 23). UTRGV rises to No. 26 nationally for social mobility in U.S. News & World Report rankings. The Newsroom. https://www.utrgv.edu/newsroom/2026/09/23/2027-us-news-world-report-best-colleges.htm

U.S. News & World Report, L.P. (2026, September 22). MIT claims No. 1 spot in U.S. News 2027 Best Colleges rankings. PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mit-claims-no-1-spot-in-us-news-2027-best-colleges-rankings-302885278.html

Wilhelm, M. (2026, September 22). Six Texas schools crack U.S. News & World Report’s 2027 top 100. Chron. https://www.chron.com/texas/article/texas-us-news-2027-best-colleges-22436271.php

Six Texas schools crack U.S. News & World's 2027 top 100
Some Texas schools climbed while others took a tumble.
By Molly Wilhelm, Trending ReporterSep 22, 2026

19 FEB 2015: Campus Life photos taken at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX.
Sam Houston ranked among U.S. News & World's 2027 Best Colleges regional list for the West. NCAA Photos/NCAA Photos via Getty Images

April 3, 2012. Sewall Hall in Rice University with a student walking in the hallway. Rice University was the top ranking Texas university among U.S. News & World's 2027 Best Colleges list. aimintang/Getty Images
U.S. News & World Report released its Best Colleges of 2027 ranking, and six Texas institutions cracked the top 100.

Houston's Rice University was the top-ranked for Texas, landing at No. 16 nationally—tied with Brown University in Rhode Island, Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

The publication measured academic quality and student outcomes using graduation and retention rates, post-graduation earnings, faculty resources and research, financial resources, incoming students' SAT and ACT scores, and other factors, according to the methodology.

But how did other Texas institutions fare, and did any see a major shift?

Texas A&M main campus clock tower. Texas A&M ranked among U.S. News &
World's top 100 in its 2027 Best Colleges ranking, down eight spots from
last year.Riley Davidson/Getty Images

Texas schools in the top 100

No 16. Rice UniversityTied with Brown University, Vanderbilt University and Washington University in St. Louis.

Up one place from 2026 rankings.

No 34. The University of Texas-AustinTied with Boston University, University of California-Davis, University of California-Irvine, University of Florida, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Wake Forest University.

Dropped four places from 2026 rankings.

No 59. Texas A&M UniversityTied with Brandeis University, Florida State University, George Washington University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Stony Brook University-SUNY, Tulane University of Louisiana, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and University of Pittsburgh.

Dropped eight places from 2026 rankings.

No 85. Southern Methodist UniversityTied with Fordham University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University at Buffalo-SUNY and University of Delaware.

Rose three places from 2026 rankings.

No 90. Baylor University and Texas Christian UniversityTied with Gonzaga University, Marquette University and Yeshiva University

Baylor dropped two places from 2026 rankings, TCU rose seven places.

University of Texas Rio Grande Valley campus, Brownsville, Texas. The school
fell nearly 40 spots in U.S. News & World's 2027 Best Colleges list.Christine_Kohler/Getty Images

Outside of the top 100, some Texas institutions drop nearly 40 places

Outside the top 100, 12 Texas universities and colleges moved more than 10 spots from last year's national rankings, with some shifting by nearly 40 places:

No. 121. The University of Texas-Dallas (tied)Dropped 11 places from 2026 rankings.

No. 186. Texas Tech University (tied)Rose 12 places from 2026 rankings.

No. 227. University of Texas-San Antonio (tied)Dropped 14 places from 2026 rankings.

No. 236. University of Texas-Arlington (tied)Dropped 14 places from 2026 rankings.

No. 250. The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley (tied) Dropped 37 places from 2026 rankings.

No. 288. Texas State University (tied) Dropped 31 places from 2026 rankings.

No. 308. Abilene Christian University (tied) Rose 21 places from 2026 rankings.

No. 308. University of the Incarnate World (tied) Dropped 15 places from the 2026 rankings.

No. 317. Prairie View A&M University (tied) Rose 26 places from 2026 rankings.

No. 332. Texas A&M University- Kingsville (tied) Rose 20 places from the 2026 rankings.

No. 342. The University of Texas at Tyler (tied) Dropped 13 places from the 2026 rankings.

No. 353. University of Houston-Clear Lake (tied) Dropped 35 places from 2026 rankings.

19 FEB 2015: Campus Life photos taken at Sam Houston State
University in Huntsville, TX. Sam Houston ranked among U.S.
News & World's 2027 Best Colleges regional list for the West.

NCAA Photos/NCAA Photos via Getty Images

The top 10 Texas regional universities and colleges

In addition to its national rankings, U.S. News & World Report ranked the top 50 regional universities and colleges. Texas schools were included in the "West" category.

The publication defines regional universities as institutions offering a wide range of undergraduate programs and some master's degrees, but few doctoral programs. Regional colleges focus on undergraduate education, with most degrees in professional fields.

Texas' top 10 regional universities

St. Edward's University (No. 6 overall)
University of Dallas (No. 10 overall, tied)
St. Mary's University of San Antonio (No. 12 overall, tied)
LeTourneau University (No. 29 overall, tied)
Stephen F. Austin State University (No. 29 overall, tied)
Texas A&M International University (No. 34 overall, tied)
West Texas A&M University (No. 37 overall)
Hardin-Simmons University (No. 38 overall, tied)
Sam Houston State University (No. 48 overall, tied)
University of Houston-Downtown (No. 48 overall, tied)

Texas' top 9 regional colleges
Southwestern Adventist University (No. 12 overall, tied)
Texas Lutheran University (No. 12 overall, tied)
Houston-Tillotson University (No. 22 overall)
McMurry University (No. 23 overall)
Howard Payne University (No. 27 overall, tied)
Wiley College (No. 42 overall)
Jarvis Christian University (No. 46-50 overall)
South Texas College (No. 46-50 overall)
Texas College (No. 46-50 overall)

While the University of Houston didn't crack the top 100 nationally, it ranked No. 67 when compared to public universities across the U.S., tied with seven other institutions. It ranked fourth when looking solely at public universities in Texas, according to a UH press release.

"The University earned Top 100 rankings in several other key categories, including Most Innovative Schools (No. 65), Best Value Schools (No. 78) and Best Colleges for Veterans (No. 96)," UH wrote on Tuesday.

Several other schools also ranked in the top 100 for public colleges: UT Austin at No. 8, Texas A&M University at No. 24, The University of Texas-Dallas at No. 58 and Texas Tech University at No. 96.

UT students attacked by Bo French call his comments “disgusting” and too familiar, by Megan Menchaca, Sept. 14, 2026

7:52 AM · Sep 13, 2026

·52.9M Views

Friends:

My students shared this with me the other evening. What happened was that someone named "Bo French" saw a group of University of Texas students in burnt orange celebrating a Longhorn touchdown and read something else into the picture: foreignness. Nothing visible in that photograph established where those students were born, what passports they carried, where they went to high school, or how long their families had lived in Texas. Yet French treated their appearance as sufficient proof that something had gone terribly wrong at the state’s flagship university.

The photograph was not, as French initially suggested, a graduation scene. It captured students celebrating a touchdown in the closing moments of UT’s game against Ohio State. French nevertheless posted it alongside the ominous declaration that “the problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined” and subsequently argued that foreigners were displacing Americans at the university (Menchaca, 2026). What transformed an ordinary scene of college football fandom into a supposed demographic crisis was not information about the students. It was the way they looked.

The Indian American Advocacy Council identified precisely that problem, condemning French for assuming that brown students pictured at UT must be foreigners (Kharade, 2026). Consider how much French did not know when he made that judgment. He did not know the students’ hometowns, their citizenship, their family histories, or even their names. Dhairya Gupta, one of the young men visible in the photograph, is in fact a naturalized American citizen (Menchaca, 2026). French’s inference therefore worked backward: appearance produced the conclusion, and the conclusion supplied the story. The faces themselves became the evidence.

French subsequently reframed the controversy as a policy question: Should American universities prioritize Americans? But that defense raises an empirical question, and UT’s enrollment structure provides a fairly clear answer. Texas law already makes Texas residents overwhelmingly dominant in undergraduate admissions. Up to 75% of each entering class is filled through automatic admission of highly ranked Texas high school graduates, and beginning with the fall 2026 entering class, UT reduced its automatic-admission threshold to the top 5% of graduating Texas seniors (Dey, 2024). 

International students, meanwhile, numbered 1,923 among 44,314 undergraduates—roughly 4% of the undergraduate population (Texas Global, 2026; University of Texas at Austin, 2025). Those numbers do not support the picture of a university being overtaken by foreign students. They describe a Texas public university whose student body increasingly reflects the diversity of Texas itself.

Nor was the objection to French’s rhetoric confined to his political opponents. Republican leaders criticized the post as well, including U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who described it as intolerant and racist (Kharade, 2026). That matters because the issue here is larger than a conventional partisan disagreement over immigration or university admissions. There is a legitimate public debate to be had about international enrollment, admissions priorities, and who public universities are designed to serve. But that debate begins with facts. It cannot reasonably begin by looking at brown students in a football stadium and presuming that they are foreigners.

And perhaps that is what makes the original photograph so revealing—but not in the way French intended. These students stood in the heat, crowded into the student section, raised their hands in the Hook ’em Horns sign, and erupted when their team scored. There is nothing anomalous about that scene. It is Texas in 2026. The students pictured should not have to produce birth certificates, passports, or family histories to establish that they belong in the stands—or at the university. Their faces are not immigration documents. Theirs are the faces of Texas.

References

Dey, S. (2024, September 16). UT-Austin tightens automatic admission threshold to 5% of Texas' top high schoolers. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/09/16/ut-austin-top-five-percent-threshold/

Kharade, P. (2026, September 14). Indian American Advocacy Council condemns Bo French's racist post on brown students from University of Texas. The Free Press Journal. https://www.freepressjournal.in/world/indian-american-advocacy-council-condemns-bo-frenchs-racist-post-on-brown-students-from-university-of-texas

Menchaca, M. (2026, September 14). UT students attacked by Bo French call his comments "disgusting" and too familiar. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/09/14/bo-french-university-texas-austin-students/

Texas Global. (2026). 2025–2026 international enrollment. The University of Texas at Austin. https://global.utexas.edu/about/international-enrollment

University of Texas at Austin. (2025). Facts and figures. https://www.utexas.edu/about/facts-and-figures

UT students attacked by Bo French call his comments “disgusting” and too familiar
In a statement Monday night, university officials indirectly addressed Bo French’s comments, calling students at the game Saturday night “incredible fans.”
by Megan Menchaca Sept. 14, 2026, 9:03 p.m. Central | Texas Tribune

Texas Longhorns fans and players celebrate following the NCAA football game against the

Ohio State Buckeyes at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin on Saturday.

Students said they were not surprised a Republican candidate lobbed racist attacks about

South Asian students seen celebrating the win. Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch/

USA TODAY Network via REUTERS

Students at the University of Texas at Austin said they were dismayed — but unsurprised — by the racist attacks lobbed at them online after a Republican candidate for statewide office suggested white Americans were being “displaced.”

Bo French, the Republican running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, on Sunday posted racist comments on X that included an image of UT students of South Asian descent celebrating the victory.

“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” French wrote in a post featuring a photo of the students. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

On Monday, French defended his comments on a conservative radio talk show. But by then, the posts had reverberated across social media, attracting comments like “Bollywood University” “Are we watching a cricket game,” “I didn’t know the stadium was in India,” and “The America we grew up in no longer exists.”

Dhairya Gupta, a senior at the University of Texas, is included in the bottom right of the photo, wearing a burnt orange T-shirt with his right arm extended into a “Hook ’em Horns” hand sign. He said he’s accustomed to seeing racist comments online, but it was “insane” to see a Republican candidate say derogatory things about him and his friends.

“When I look at that picture, I don’t see a problem,” Gupta said in an interview Monday with The Texas Tribune.

RELATED STORY
Karl Rove said he’ll break 30 years of only supporting Republicans to vote against “bigot” Bo French Sept. 14, 2026

The controversy is the latest in a long line of incendiary comments made by French that have been condemned by his fellow Republicans, many of whom have endorsed him.

The comments also follow years of conservative lawmakers attacking diversity, equity and inclusion policies at public universities like UT.

French — who did not immediately respond to a request for comment — referred to the students’ picture as “foreigners” who displaced Americans, without having any information about their status. The citizenship status of all the students in the photo are unknown, although Gupta told The Dallas Morning News he is a naturalized citizen.

Approximately 26% of degree-seeking undergraduate students at UT are Asian, up from 20% a decade ago. About 29% of students are white, which is down from 44% in the same time period. UT has been prohibited from considering race in its admissions process since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2023.

Students said the cohort of South Asian students at the football game happened partially by happenstance. Like everyone else, they and their friends waited many hours in line in the heat before the highly anticipated game against Ohio State and ran to the closest seats to the field when UT let them into the student section of the stadium.

“If you were at the game, you know that picture is taken extremely out of context,” said Arsheeya Moyeen, a UT sophomore. “I’m gonna be completely candid. I think, as a politician, as somebody in the public eye, to take something like that out of context and manipulate it to fit your agenda and your views on a certain race is extremely unprofessional.”

Kevin Eltife, chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, shared a statement online Monday evening — about a day after French’s post — thanking students at the game for “making us proud.”

“When I stood on the sidelines at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium Saturday night and looked up at the seats filled with incredible fans, I saw Longhorns,” Eltife said. “It’s the same remarkable view I have at graduation ceremonies and anytime I’m on campus. I’m proud to celebrate all our Longhorn students today and every day.”

UT President Jim Davis said in a follow-up social media post that the university’s students were exceptional and “all of them are Longhorns.” UT did not respond to a request for further comment.

The photo French shared is a screenshot from a video that the official social media accounts of Texas Athletics posted Saturday evening. The 17-second vertical video shows a group of students in one part of the student section celebrating after the Longhorns scored a touchdown in the final minute of the game.

UT sophomore Lisa Varghese, who was sitting in the same section as Gupta and Moyeen, said she was shocked at the ignorance she saw on social media in response to the video and French’s post. She said French was using skin color and “blatant racism” as a divisive factor to tear people apart.

“To complain about skin color and to complain about other people ‘taking over’ UT Austin and how disappointing that is is just disgusting,” Varghese said. “It really is because I feel like football and sports (are) something that should be uniting. It should be a uniting factor. It should be something that we all come together to celebrate.”

Moyeen said racist posts on social media toward certain groups are disappointing, but she believes they have become normalized. She said she initially ignored the “horrible racist generalizations” under UT’s initial video on social media — until French made his tweet.

“There will always be racist people out there who feel OK with hiding behind a screen and commenting things about people that they don’t know, but for a politician running for a public office to come out and say those same hateful things just takes it to a whole different level that you truly can’t ignore anymore,” Moyeen said.

French said UT was “filled with foreign nationals” and argued that the school has prioritized foreign students and workers. However, under state law, 90% of UT freshmen must be in-state residents, while the remaining 10% are international students or out-of-state students. International students comprised about 4% of undergraduates in the 2025-26 school year.

UT offers automatic admission to all in-state residents in the top 5% of their high school graduating class. Under state law, 75% of UT’s freshman class must be admitted under this policy. The remaining students are admitted through a holistic process that considers factors such as grade point average, extracurriculars and personal essays.

Gupta said he’s concerned about the broad sentiment of French’s post and how many people publicly agreed with him. He said, though, it brought a smile to his face seeing the Longhorns who were vocally defending him, his friends and the other pictured UT students on social media.

“It seemed like the actual Texas alumni seemed to be very passionate about the fact that these are also students at the university, and this is the university,” Gupta said. “It’s not defined by the demographic(s) of the university itself, but by the culture of the university.”

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UT is merging four ethnic and gender studies departments. What changes this fall, by Lily Kepner, July 10, 2026

Friends, 

I invite you to read Lily Kepner’s important reporting on the uncertain future of the University of Texas at Austin’s newly created Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Her article makes clear that the consolidation of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies is not simply an administrative reorganization. It entails the loss of departmental names, leadership positions, staff jobs, institutional homes, and scholarly identities built over decades.

At the same time, the appointment of Dr. Danielle Clealand as interim chair offers some reassurance that the new department will be led by a respected scholar who understands these fields and has the trust of many colleagues. Faculty are clearly determined to protect their students, programs, intellectual traditions, and hard-won legacies. 

Still, the unanswered questions remain profound: Will the new department receive the resources, autonomy, and institutional respect it needs to thrive—or is this only the first stage of further erosion?

Kepner’s article captures both the grief of what is being lost and the resolve of faculty to carry this essential work forward. 

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

UT is merging four ethnic and gender studies departments. What changes this fall

Six weeks before the University of Texas begins its fall semester, its new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis still lacks a permanent home and a clear identity.

By Lily Kepner,Staff WriterJuly 10, 2026

Murals decorate the University of Texas Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies office in Burdine Hall, Feb. 18, 2026. UT President Jim Davis announced plans this year to consolidate ethnic and gender studies into a new department and review the courses and majors within it, but the future of the new department is still unclear.

Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman
Six weeks before the University of Texas begins its fall semester, its new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis still lacks both a permanent home and a clear identity.

As Texas universities face growing political pressure over identity-based academic programs, UT President Jim Davis announced in February that the university’s four ethnic and women gender and sexuality studies departments would be consolidated into a new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.

Offering the clearest picture yet of the department's future, College of Liberal Arts Interim Dean David Sosa on July 1 appointed Danielle Clealand, an associate professor in the Mexican American and Latina/o Studies department, as interim chair of the new department .

At the end of the academic year, the four department chairs learned they will lose their appointments in August, a new department manager was hired and the departments’ names were removed from the doors, the former chairs said.

Between the two new departments, which also include European and Eurasian studies, five staff members lost their jobs, and others were reassigned, Clealand confirmed. She said they were committed to finding new positions for the staff.

The new department and its website launch Aug. 15, when the departments of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies and Women and Gender Studies will close, Clealand said. But many questions remain.

After her first week as interim chair, Clealand, speaking to the American-Statesman as an individual, said she doesn't expect a Social and Cultural Analysis major to launch by the fall. She also said the new department has not yet been assigned a home, as the four former departments were spread across two buildings.

Although her focus going into the role is to unite the four departments in a collective vision, “I don't know if we have a unifying message yet,” Clealand said in an interview after her appointment. “Perhaps we'll get there. But I think for now we want students to know that yes, this is one large department, but within that department you can still take all of the same classes and majors that you could before.”

Clealand’s appointment eased faculty's fears that the consolidation would weaken the decades-old departments, which collectively offer six undergraduate majors, four graduate programs, six minors and three doctorate programs, said Karma Chavez, the chair of Mexican American and Latino/a studies.

“I think everyone in the four units realizes that we lost our battle, and that our objective now is to focus on building the best new department collectively and collaboratively that we possibly can,” Chavez said, adding that Clealand is “the right leader for this time.”

“The biggest question that all of us have is whether we're going to be treated like a normal department,” Chavez said, or if “another shoe will drop.”

Cherise Smith, the department chair of African and African Diaspora studies said she is "cautiously excited” about coming together with different intellectual groups and working with more students.

Smith said defining the department’s mission is complicated because social and cultural analysis is not a commonly established academic discipline.

“It’s destabilizing for all of us,” she said. “Many of us are wondering whether we can be a unified department.”

What will and won’t change this fall

Clealand said she accepted the interim chair position because she had earned the trust of colleagues in her home department and in African and African Diaspora studies, where she had often collaborated. She also held a leadership position in Mexican American and Latino studies.

Her hope for the new department, she said, is “longevity.”

Clealand said enrollment declined in ethnic and gender studies after UT eliminated the signature-course program that allowed students to satisfy core curriculum requirements through many of the departments’ classes.

Now, Clealand said she wants to encourage prospective students and faculty to see the new department’s potential despite frustration over the consolidation, which she said a majority of faculty opposed.

Having worked across two departments, Clealand said she’s seen the benefits of collaboration and hopes the consolidation will ultimately strengthen those connections.

“I think that right now people don't necessarily know what we're doing, and recruiting can be challenging because of that,” Clealand said. “But I'm hoping that we can establish ourselves as a really strong department, not only institutionally but nationally.”

Sosa, the College of Liberal Arts interim dean, said the college will begin reviewing the new department’s curriculum and degree programs during the next academic year. For now, Clealand said, all existing degree programs will continue enrolling students and offering the same curriculum.

Now, Clealand said she wants to encourage prospective students and faculty to see the new department’s potential despite frustration over the consolidation, which she said a majority of faculty opposed.

Having worked across two departments, Clealand said she’s seen the benefits of collaboration and hopes the consolidation will ultimately strengthen those connections.

“I think that right now people don't necessarily know what we're doing, and recruiting can be challenging because of that,” Clealand said. “But I'm hoping that we can establish ourselves as a really strong department, not only institutionally but nationally.”

Sosa, the College of Liberal Arts interim dean, said the college will begin reviewing the new department’s curriculum and degree programs during the next academic year. For now, Clealand said, all existing degree programs will continue enrolling students and offering the same curriculum.

‘This existential crisis’

In mid-August, professors will become “professors of social and cultural analysis,” a new department website will launch, and the four original departments will shutter.

For the former chairs, the changes amount to the loss of departments they spent their careers building.

Lisa Moore, who has taught at UT since 1991 and chairs Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, worries the new department will render her life work “invisible.”

“It's heartbreaking, and I do find myself kind of grief about it catching me,” she said. “It feels like just a really brutal loss of my scholarly and professional identity, and an erasure of the decades of my career that I know I've spent building this field.”

When Smith became chair, university leaders envisioned African and African Diaspora studies as a program that could touch every student through the core curriculum, she said.

The department eventually grew to 26 faculty members — the largest of its kind in the nation — attracting students from around the world. Although the department itself is disappearing, Smith said its legacy doesn’t have to.

“These challenges, this existential crisis, has made us recommit to and refocused on what we do,” Smith said. “ We're going to exist in a different way from here on out, but there are things that we will continue to do and that we need to continue to do intellectually and training our students, for example, that we don't need to have a department named African and African Diaspora Studies to do.”

When Consolidation Is Elimination: Ethnic Studies, Faculty Governance, and Power at UT, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

When Consolidation Is Elimination: Ethnic Studies, Faculty Governance, and Power at UT

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 24, 2026

UT President Jim Davis talks with Daily Texan
News Editor Maryam Ahmed in his office during the
first sit-down interview of his tenure.

In an April 9, 2026 interview with The Daily Texan, reporter Maryam Ahmed pressed UT President Jim Davis on decisions that cut to the core of the university’s academic mission: the consolidation of Ethnic Studies and related departments, the restructuring of faculty governance, and the question of public trust in higher education (Ahmed, 2026a, 2026b). What emerges is not reassurance, but a troubling portrait of governance redefined, faculty voice narrowed, and critical fields rendered administratively vulnerable under the language of “efficiency” and “stewardship.”

At issue is not whether combining departments yields intellectual “fullness,” as Davis suggests. Ethnic Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies are already deeply interdisciplinary by design. They were built to cross boundaries, challenge siloed thinking, and interrogate power. The claim that they must be consolidated to achieve interdisciplinarity reflects not innovation, but a misreading—or dismissal—of their intellectual foundations.

What remains unspoken is that “consolidation” is rarely neutral. It often functions as a quiet form of elimination—not of people, but of departmental standing, autonomy, and power. Departments carry budget authority, hiring lines, curricular control, and institutional visibility. Collapse them, and you reduce the number of sites where faculty exercise collective authority. This is not merely organizational—it is political. Power moves upward and inward, away from the very units that have historically produced the most sustained critiques of inequality.

Equally flawed is the premise that these fields are not already in dialogue. Ethnic Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies have long operated in robust conversation—through joint appointments, cross-listed courses, and shared theoretical frameworks. To suggest they must be administratively merged to “see from different angles” misreads their history and erases existing collaboration. What is presented as integration risks becoming administrative diminishment.

When department chairs raised objections, Davis acknowledged “difference of opinion,” but deferred to a “consensus recommendation.” The question is unavoidable: whose consensus—and under what conditions was it produced?

That question takes on added urgency in light of Texas Senate Bill 37. The elected Faculty Council has been replaced with an appointed advisory body that, by Davis’s own admission, is “not intended to be representative.” This is not a procedural adjustment; it is a redefinition of governance itself. Representation is not incidental—it is the democratic core of faculty authority. What replaces it is curated input: invited voices without collective power.

Davis casts this shift as a move from “discord” to “stewardship.” But governance without disagreement is not governance—it is management. The Faculty Council’s openness enabled contestation, visibility, and record. Informal conversations, however frequent, cannot substitute for structures that allow faculty to deliberate, dissent, and hold leadership accountable. They invite candor, perhaps—but not power.

Seen in this light, the consolidation of Ethnic Studies is not an isolated decision. It is part of a broader transformation in how authority is organized and exercised. When representative structures weaken, decisions about curriculum and resources become more susceptible to top-down rationales—especially those framed in neutral administrative language. Terms like “efficiency” and “balance” function as what critical policy scholars call “discursive cover,” recasting political choices as technical necessity (Fairclough, 1992; Tauber & Wolf, 2018).

Davis denies that political pressures shaped the decision. Yet this claim must be read within the context of Texas Senate Bill 17, which has already dismantled DEI infrastructure and chilled institutional commitments to equity. Even without explicit directives, universities operate under conditions of anticipatory compliance—aligning themselves with perceived political expectations to avoid risk. In such an environment, structural changes to fields like Ethnic Studies rarely occur in a vacuum.

The same ambiguity surrounds resources. Davis insists that “nothing has changed,” yet acknowledges uncertainty ahead. Faculty concerns about moving from multiple funding streams to fewer reflect well-established patterns: consolidation often leads to internal competition, diminished autonomy, and eventual contraction. The metaphor of a recombined pie obscures a central reality—who controls the knife.

There is also an intellectual cost. Ethnic Studies does not simply add perspective; it anchors critical inquiry into race, power, colonialism, and inequality. When absorbed into larger units, its distinctiveness—and its capacity to challenge dominant frameworks—can be diluted. The result is not interdisciplinarity, but incorporation: difference folded into sameness.

Public trust will not be restored through consolidation or administrative redesign. It is built through transparency, accountability, and genuine shared governance. It requires not only listening to faculty, but ensuring they have real, representative power in shaping institutional direction.

UT Austin is not just reorganizing departments—it is redefining who gets to decide what counts as knowledge, whose voices carry authority, and which fields are allowed to remain visible as distinct sites of critique.

And that is the real stakes of this moment: not whether programs are combined, but whether the university still has the structural capacity—and the political will—to sustain knowledge that speaks back to power, rather than being quietly reorganized out of it.

References

Ahmed, M. (2026a, April 9). Exclusive: UT President Jim Davis reflects on first year leading University. The Daily Texan. https://thedailytexan.com/2026/04/09/exclusive-ut-president-jim-davis-reflects-on-first-year-leading-university/

Ahmed, M. (2026b, April 9). Read the full transcript of UT President Jim Davis’ first interview since taking office. The Daily Texan. https://thedailytexan.com/2026/04/09/read-the-full-transcript-of-ut-president-jim-davis-first-interview-since-taking-office/

Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Polity Press.

Tauber, R., & Wolf, S. (2018, December 5). Students, faculty discuss free speech. The Williams Record. https://williamsrecord.com/4037/news/students-faculty-discuss-free-speech/

UT Austin Is Dismantling Its Academic Core—And Calling It “Optimization,” by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

UT Austin Is Dismantling Its Academic Core—And Calling It “Optimization”

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

January 26, 2026

The University of Texas at Austin has announced that it is closing its Center for Teaching and Learning, along with the Office of Community Engagement, the Vick Advising Excellence Center, and the Office of Undergraduate Research.

Geez, that's a lot to come down, to get dismantled, that is.

The decision—communicated quietly, with no meaningful consultation and almost no explanation—has left faculty stunned, confused, and rightly alarmed.

According to Provost William Inboden, these closures are part of an effort to “optimize” and “streamline” operations. But stripped of administrative jargon, the reality is this: UT is eliminating the very structures that support teaching excellence, interdisciplinary collaboration, student mentoring, undergraduate research, and community engagement—at a time when faculty and students need those supports now more than ever.

As American Association of University Professors campus president Dr. Karma Chávez put it, there is no pedagogical or institutional logic for dismantling a centralized teaching center. For many faculty, the Center for Teaching and Learning was not a luxury—it was transformative. It created cross-college dialogue, supported innovative pedagogy, strengthened student learning, and allowed faculty to adapt to a rapidly changing classroom environment. For some, it was the single most meaningful professional development experience of their careers.

The administration’s claim that these functions are “rooted in colleges and schools” collapses under even minimal scrutiny. Many colleges—including the College of Liberal Arts, UT’s largest—have no teaching center at all. What this decision actually does is fragment support, deepen inequities across units, and eliminate the very spaces where interdisciplinary exchange and shared governance can occur.

Even more troubling is the broader pattern this decision fits into. The Office of Community Engagement—now being shuttered—was the last remaining remnant of UT’s once-robust Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, dismantled after Texas passed its anti-DEI law, Senate Bill 17. While these offices were not labeled “DEI,” they were grounded in the best research on how to support students, particularly those historically underserved, through advising, teaching, research access, and community connection. 

Eliminating them does not create neutrality. It creates a gaping void. And absence is not accidental. It's by design. And it's about more people losing their jobs when this is not about budgetary imperatives. Pointedly, UT Austin is not facing a financial crisis, and the provost’s email cited none. 

Nor does it make sense as cost-saving if the work is merely “redistributed” across colleges—duplicated, diluted, and stripped of the coherence it had. What is being optimized here is not efficiency, but control. What is being streamlined is not bureaucracy, but the university’s public mission.

This pattern is not unique to UT. Across the country, state laws and political pressures are eroding the capacity of universities to support students and faculty in substantive ways, not by accident but as part of a broader governance agenda that conflates equity-related work with political ideology (Sachs & Young, 2024).

At a moment when faculty are navigating political interference, curricular surveillance, and the chilling effects of state power, UT has chosen to remove the very institutions that help educators weather those storms. 

Teaching centers do not impose ideology; they defend pedagogical integrity.

Advising centers do not indoctrinate; they catch students before they fall through the cracks. 

Offices of undergraduate research do not politicize learning. They democratize access to knowledge production.

Calling this “optimization” or "streamlining" insults the intelligence of the faculty and students who know better. This is institutional subtraction masquerading as reform. And it should concern anyone who believes that a flagship public university ought to lead—not capitulate—when higher education itself is under attack.

Flagships do not hollow themselves out from the inside. When they allow it to happen, they surrender their public mission. And to whose benefit? And toward what ends? Their silence is deafening.

Reference

Sachs, J. A., & Young, J. C. (2024). America’s censored classrooms 2024: Refining the art of censorship (Report). PEN America. https://pen.org/report/americas-censored-classrooms-2024/?utm_source=chatgpt.com


UT-Austin Is Closing Its Teaching Center. Faculty Members Ask: Why?

The U. of Texas at Austin campusSergio Flores for The Washington Post, Getty Images

By Beth McMurtrieJanuary 22, 2026

The U. of Texas at Austin campusSergio Flores for The Washington Post, Getty Images

The University of Texas at Austin is shuttering its longstanding Center for Teaching and Learning at the end of the semester, part of a wave of changes announced last Friday that include the closure of the Office of Community Engagement, a campus advising center, and the Office of Undergraduate Research.

The news, which came in an email from William Inboden, the university’s provost, presented these moves as part of an effort to “optimize” and “streamline” academic operations. He wrote that resources provided by the programs would be repurposed, but offered no details.

Faculty members were stunned by the news.

“I literally cannot think of any reason why you would dismantle a centralized center for teaching and learning,” said Karma Chávez, president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and a professor of Mexican American and Latina/o studies. “It absolutely baffles me.”

Chávez said she had scant information — the email was sent to a small number of people on campus, including deans, she heard — but learned through conversations with colleagues who are directly affected that the “vast majority” of the staff will be laid off, more than 20 people. The teaching center is the largest of the four operations, and lists 13 staff members, along with 11 student workers, on its website.

In the email, Inboden said the changes “are designed to enhance collaboration, create new pathways for partnerships, prudently steward our resources, and strengthen existing units within our colleges and schools.”

Mike Rosen, senior director of media strategy, said in an email that the university’s commitment to undergraduate research, faculty support, advising, and student programming is unchanged. “Those functions are rooted in our colleges and schools, which are best equipped to meet their needs,” he wrote. ”Closing those particular offices will allow us to focus resources for these programs where they are most needed and most effective.”

Mary Neuburger, a history professor and chair of Slavic and Eurasian studies, said the argument that those functions are rooted in colleges and schools made little sense to her. The College of Liberal Arts, where she teaches, doesn’t even have a teaching center. “We have nothing,” she said. “And we’re one of the biggest colleges.”

Neuburger, who has taught at the university for almost 30 years, said her time working on a project with the Center for Teaching and Learning was “the single most transformative experience I’ve had at UT.” She was a Provost’s Teaching Fellow, she said, and was able to discuss teaching issues with faculty members from across the university. Now she worries that interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange of ideas will be lost.

Nina Telang, a professor of instruction in the department of electrical and computer engineering, was also a teaching fellow. The support she received at the center allowed her to build supplemental instruction into many courses in her department — not just her own — with the help of the campus tutoring center. She also developed wellness workshops for engineering students in collaboration with the campus wellness center. “Every single CTL initiative has ultimately benefited the students,” she said. “It’s all about the student.”

Josh Eyler, senior director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi, who is active nationally on teaching issues, said he was surprised that UT-Austin would shutter a distinguished center with a long history, particularly at a time when the challenges facing faculty members in the classroom are growing.

“At their best,” he said, “teaching centers provide a place to advocate for faculty and to help them make it through the storm of constant changes and new technologies and new fads and new approaches that are coming down the pike.”

Professors also mourned the closure of the other offices, saying they provided special services. Every college on campus has its own advising center but the Vick Advising Excellence Center “was for students who were slipping through the cracks to get extra help,” Neuburger said. “That was part of a huge initiative to increase our graduation rates, and it was working.”

She was also confused as to why the university would eliminate the Office of Undergraduate Research when engaging students in research has been an administrative priority. That office, in particular, has helped students find opportunities to do interdisciplinary work, Chávez said.

Rosen said he did not have information on any positions eliminated. He said that Inboden was not available for an interview. Neither Molly Hatcher, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, nor Jeff Handy, director of the Vick Advising Excellence Center, responded to email requests for interviews.

Not UniqueStaffing cuts to student-facing services are certainly not unusual given the tough financial situation many colleges now find themselves in. Last year Catholic University of America eliminated 16 positions in its Center for Academic and Career Success to help address a $30-million structural deficit. And Emerson College, which has been dealing with enrollment declines, cut half of its eight full-time staff in the Office of Student Success.

But UT-Austin doesn’t have financial woes, faculty members said, and the provost’s email said nothing about needing to trim costs. Chávez said that eliminating central offices doesn’t make financial sense to her if, in fact, the administration will just be moving that work to schools and colleges, duplicating it several times over. “I’m not sure how that would be a streamlining or a cost-cutting mechanism.”

Rather, she worries that this is more about eliminating the last traces of diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus. The offices being shuttered are not practicing DEI, she said. But the best scholarship on advising, teaching, community engagement, and supporting diverse students in undergraduate research relies on that framework. She noted, too, that the Office of Community Engagement is the “last vestige” of what was once the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, which was shuttered after the state passed a law banning DEI activities. That went from a division with dozens of people to an office with two staff, doing outreach work in the community. “That’ll be gone now, too.”

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

UT Didn’t Just Reject a $100,000 Endowment. It Entrenched Discrimination, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

UT Didn’t Just Reject a $100,000 Endowment. It Entrenched Discrimination

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. 

January 9, 2026

The University of Texas at Austin didn’t just turn down a $100,000 endowment for Hispanic scholars. It chose fear over law, optics over mission, and political compliance over institutional integrity.

As reported by Lily Kepner in the Austin American-Statesman, Daniel Acosta—a former UT Pharmacy professor, founding director of the College of Pharmacy, former dean, and senior federal scientist—offered to endow a scholarship to support Hispanic doctoral students and help address UT’s persistent underrepresentation of Hispanic faculty. 

He pledged $40,000 himself; the College of Pharmacy reportedly raised the remaining $60,000 because it believed in the goal. Then UT and Texas Exes quietly shut it down.

The excuse was Texas Senate Bill 17. But here’s the truth UT doesn’t want to say aloud: SB 17 does not apply to Texas Exes. There was no legal barrier. Employment law experts confirmed it. This was not compliance—it was appeasement of the governor, the Legislature’s far-right bloc, and a political movement determined to purge diversity from public life.

And appeasement has consequences.

Latinas and Latinos now make up more than 40% of the state, yet their representation among the faculty at UT remains stuck at 10.5%, with even deeper underrepresentation in elite research fields like pharmacy. 

Acosta himself was only the second Hispanic professor in the College of Pharmacy when he joined UT in the 1970s. Fifty years later, UT still hasn’t fixed the pipeline—and when a Loyal Longhorn offers to help with private dollars, the university recoils.

As UT professor Liliana Garces warns, so-called “color-blind” policies don’t end discrimination—they entrench it. By refusing to acknowledge race at all, institutions simply preserve unequal structures while pretending neutrality. UT’s decision does exactly that.

Let’s stop pretending this is about the law. UT has already gone far beyond what SB 17 requires, erasing race-conscious efforts not because they’re illegal, but because administrators are afraid. Afraid of politicians. Afraid of headlines. Afraid of defending the very principles they once celebrated when diversity was politically safe.

This is not leadership. It is institutional cowardice.

UT didn’t lose a donation. It lost moral authority. It told Hispanic students and future scholars that representation is expendable, belonging is conditional, and equity is negotiable. In a state whose future is unmistakably Latino, that message is not just wrong—it is reckless.

And appeasement has consequences. It raises the question of how many other equity-focused gifts have been quietly blocked or abandoned—and whether UT has imposed an unofficial ban on lawful donor initiatives. That question demands public disclosure and independent oversight, not silence.

But flagships don’t drift with political tides. Flagships lead. They set a course rooted in mission, not fear. They confront the hard challenges of their state, refuse to shrink from serving all its people, and uphold equity and inclusion as central to educational excellence—not as optional extras. 

UT’s stated values include leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility to serve as a catalyst for positive change (see Mission and Values statement). Yet in refusing a donor-funded initiative to expand representation at a time when the state’s demographics are shifting and UT’s faculty remains far from representative, the university revealed how far it has strayed from that mission. What was once a flagship of bold ideas and public purpose now appears content to avoid controversy rather than champion justice.

And they're dragging the future of public higher education in Texas with it.

He offered UT a $100,000 endowment for Hispanic scholars. Texas Exes denied it

After years trying to create a scholarship at UT's College of Pharmacy for Hispanic scholars, Texas Exes denied it because of its diversity focus, a donor said.

By Lily Kepner,Staff WriterJan 8, 2026

Daniel Acosta, former UT Pharmacy professor, sits in the living room of his home in Central Austin on Monday, Jan 5, 2026. Acosta's recent attempt to establish an endowment to help Hispanic graduate students and address the lack of diversity in the pharmacy faculty at the University of Texas at Austin was denied amid DEI scares.

Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman

Daniel Acosta was the top pharmacy class graduate at the University of Texas in 1968. After pursuing his doctorate in Kansas, he returned to the Forty Acres as the inaugural director of the College of Pharmacy. He taught from 1974 to 1996 as the college's second Hispanic professor and went on to become a dean at the University of Cincinnati and the deputy director of the Federal Drug Administration’s Toxicology Center.

Daniel Acosta, former UT Pharmacy professor, looks through emails in his home in Central Austin on Monday, Jan 5, 2026.

Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman

The rejection of Acosta’s endowment, funded by his own $40,000 donation and another $60,000 he said was raised by the College of Pharmacy, is the latest casualty of an increasingly anti-DEI climate fostered by President Donald Trump and conservative Texas leaders, which has jeopardized programs designed to counter decades of unequal access to education and wealth.

UT spokesperson Mike Rosen confirmed that Senate Bill 17, a 2023 anti-DEI Texas law, prevents the university from accepting such scholarships because a provision that prohibits any “special benefit” conferred based on race, sexual orientation or gender.

REWIND: What UT lost with SB 17: American-Statesman’s guide to changes due to Texas' anti-DEI law

But the law does not apply to the alumni-group Texas Exes, which has worked with Acosta since March 2025 and had sent him an agreement for a named scholarship to be awarded to a doctoral student in pharmacology or toxicology from a “diverse or underrepresented background.” 

A Texas Exes spokesperson declined to comment. The board has not adopted an official policy on accepting — or denying — new race-based scholarships. The nonprofit still offers dozens of specialty scholarships, including some based on race, region, interests, sexuality, academic interest and network membership, according to its website.

Although conservative politicians say diversity, equity and inclusion practices illegally discriminate against white individuals, Kell Simon, an employment lawyer who specializes in anti-discrimination law, said there is no legal reason he knows of that would block the Texas Exes from accepting the scholarship. 

The Trump administration has made diversity, equity and inclusion, a “boogeyman,” in part through executive orders that declare the practices “illegal,” Simon said. But Simon’s office fields almost no hiring complaints related to such practices, he said.

“In my line of work, I do not see DEI policies or practices hurting anybody,” Simon said. “From a legal perspective, it’s nothing more than an ideology. I don’t think there’s any law that would say, ‘No, you can’t establish a scholarship.’”

RELATED: UT’s independence tested as politics reshapes Texas higher ed — again

‘It all unraveled’

The percentage of Hispanic faculty at UT has increased in the last decade and currently sits at 10.5%, exceeding the national average and other research public universities of comparable size. Hispanic people are now the largest demographic group in Texas, making up more than 40% of its population and roughly one-third of Austin's population.

A photo of the UT tower is displayed in the home office of Daniel Acosta, former UT Pharmacy professor, in his 

home in Central Austin on Monday, Jan 5, 2026.

Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman

Four UT System institutions were founding members of the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities in 2022, promising to grow opportunities for Hispanic students and scholars. UT received the Seal of Excelencia, a designation awarded nationally for an institution’s commitment to Hispanic students, in 2020, 2021 and 2023, but it was not recertified after the university took steps to comply with Texas’s anti-DEI law.

“Back then diversity was a good word,” said Acosta. “Now, it’s a bad one.”

MORE: Second Texas university system to restrict race and gender courses

Acosta and DEI proponents say faculty and the student body should reflect the population of Texas, and he worries that the College of Pharmacy’s majority-white faculty composition will discourage future scholars like himself from seeing themselves in the field.

Wanting to help with his own resources, Acosta approached the college more than four years ago about a scholarship for Hispanic doctoral students who wanted to continue as professors at UT. He already had established a graduate fellowship fund at UT’s College of Pharmacy to help fund travel for research and wanted a new initiative specifically to improve faculty diversity.

He said the college was initially enthusiastic about the idea. While Acosta planned to contribute $40,000 to the endowment, he said the College of Pharmacy told him the school found private donors to fund the last $60,000, believing in his vision of a more diverse faculty. 

The college did not respond to requests for comment on the $60,000, but emails reviewed by the Statesman show that officials were in communication with Acosta over several years.

In 2024, Acosta said, he and the college were ready to sign an agreement with UT.

“That’s when it all unraveled,” he said.

REWIND: One year under SB 17: A timeline of how Texas' anti-DEI law swept through UT, the state

SB 17 — pitched as a bill to end DEI in hiring, programs and offices — took effect Jan. 1, 2024. In implementing its measures, officials froze or changed at least 131 scholarships across UT System and Texas A&M University System institutions, which could no longer have race or gender criteria, the Dallas Morning News reported.  

But the law only impacted public universities, not nonprofits. The Texas Exes, which administers $4.6 million in scholarships at UT each year, held meetings with Acosta and drafted an agreement to accept his endowment with diversity as part of the criteria, Acosta said. Emails between the Texas Exes and Acosta support that account. 

At their first meeting in March 2025, still nervous about the scholarship’s future, he drafted questions to ensure the nonprofit could accept his funds and diversity requirements without fear of repercussions. Acosta said he was reassured.

“Texas Exes was our savior,” he said. 

At that time, Texas conservatives urged universities to follow the letter and “spirit” of SB 17 in letters and posts on X. Some threatened presidents’ jobs and the funding of their institutions if schools were out of compliance with the law. The pressure campaign intensified nationally when Trump returned to the White House last January, seeking to end DEI practices in one of his first executive actions.

REWIND: Texas senators threaten no new university funding until schools fully comply with DEI ban

Although Acosta received an agreement from Texas Exes over the summer, he did not hear from them for several months. Multiple emails show Acosta going back and forth with Texas Exes officials over the details before then. In late November, College of Pharmacy officials asked to meet with him. 

“I thought I was signing the papers,” he said. But instead, the officials told Acosta that Texas Exes was taking a break from accepting new race-based scholarships, and his proposal would not proceed, Acosta said.

“They’re scared,” he said. “They didn’t know what to do.” 

RELATED: UNT, TAMU make changes impacting LGBTQ, ethnic studies before lege. Will others follow?

What UT will miss

Simon says DEI practices and diversity scholarships are “entirely legal,” despite increasing political pressure to end them and the fall of affirmative action, which applies to how race is used in college admissions. But Texas Exes isn’t alone in avoiding DEI-related activities. A December Pro-Publica report found that more than 1,000 nonprofits erased language from diversity, equity and inclusion in their tax filings this year, presumably to avoid unwanted scrutiny or attention.

MORE: ‘This was politics’: How UT slashing its DEI programs crushed careers, halted a life’s work

Liliana Garces, a UT professor who studies educational inequities and policy, said all students benefit from a diversity of perspectives, and a diverse faculty body helps bring students of color “a sense of belonging for their experiences and validation.” In studying the impact of SB 17 on Texas, she has seen “more restrictive” compliance standards than what the law mandates, such as removing mention of race at all.

But the resulting color-blind policies ignore discrimination, she said, and result in “entrenching discrimination as opposed to addressing it.” 

“We’ve grown up in a society that is entrenched by so many different barriers to opportunity on the basis of race, and these are policies that help address those differential opportunities for students so that they can come and be more fully included in our campus and be able to contribute,” Garces said. “And what we know from decades of research is that when we have those very different perspectives and backgrounds and experiences in the classroom is that it enriches everyone’s education.”

Acosta ultimately decided to fold his donation into his current endowment funding that supports travel for any college of pharmacy PhD student, having already donated half of his pledge and unsure if and when his diversity focused scholarship would be considered.

“I’m holding out hope that it won’t be permanent,” Acosta said about the pause. He still counts himself a “Loyal Longhorn,” his home office complete with a photograph of the lit-up UT Tower.

PAST: Texas SB 17 bans DEI in colleges. So why did UT end a program for undocumented students?

Acosta thinks of young people like himself, who are just starting out, but facing more barriers than he did as tuition and selectivity in higher education admissions increases. He thinks of them asking, “It’s there a place for me? Is it still the same way it was 50 years ago? Shall I even try?”

“I’d like to think we can do better and encourage young people,” Acosta said. “That’s my hope.”

Lily Kepner

Higher Education Reporter

Lily Kepner started at the American-Statesman in October 2023. She has appeared on BBC, NPR and Texas Standard to talk about her coverage, which has spanned the impact of state laws and politics on the University of Texas, pro-Palestinian protests, free speech, the anti-DEI ban, LGBTQ student belonging and more. Kepner graduated with honors from Boston University's College of Communication in 2023, where she received the college's highest awards for writing and journalism leadership and led the award-winning student newspaper as Editor-in-Chief. In her time with the American-Statesman, she contributed to reporting that won an Edward R Murrow Award for breaking news, won the School Bell Award for Outstanding Feature from Texas State Teachers Association, and Critics Choice for Best of Austin in the Austin Chronicle. Previously, she has been published in USA Today, The Boston Globe, The National Catholic Reporter and GBH. Kepner is passionate about accountability and service journalism and encourages anyone to reach out to her to tell their story or share a tip.