New Poll Warns of Impending Faculty Crisis at Texas Universities Following Legislature’s Attacks on Higher Education

Attendees (including ACC AFT President David Albert) at the Texas Higher Education Summit in Beaumont last week shared their reasons for supporting the Educator's Bill of Rights proposed by Texas AFT. Last week's event was organized by the Texas Faculty Association and Texas AAUP-AFT.

Texas AAUP-AFT, the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and the Texas Faculty Association (TFA) released a new poll of Texas university and college faculty, and the findings are clear and bleak.

In their 2024 survey, the organizations found that 61% of professors wouldn't recommend Texas for a faculty position to their out-of-state colleagues, with almost two-thirds of university educators citing their concerns with Texas' handling of higher education.

On top of this, more than a quarter (26.3%) of surveyed faculty plan to interview elsewhere this coming year, and more than a quarter (28.3%) said they have interviewed elsewhere since 2022. The top destinations for faculty seeking to leave were, in order, California, New York, and Colorado.

These numbers are concerning but not surprising, and they build on what we've heard from educators in Texas since Gov. Greg Abbott and the Legislature waged war on higher education in the 2023 legislative session. Accordingly, the top issue identified by faculty who want to leave was the state's political climate (48.6%), followed by anxieties about academic freedom (46.3%), one of the essential rights outlined in our Educator's Bill of Rights, Texas AFT's legislative agenda for 2025.

More and more faculty across the state are concerned about preserving universities as spaces of academic freedom and expression, particularly in the aftermath of Senate Bill 17, which banned Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs at Texas universities and was signed into law by the governor last year.

Education advocates, attorneys, professors, and others gathered to speak about the shared fight of AAUP-AFT and TFA members at the Texas Higher Education Summit last week in Beaumont.

At the summit, many speakers commented on resisting and opposing the Legislature's attack on personal freedom, especially when it comes to bills like SB 17, SB 18, and SB 8, among others. By reaching out to your elected officials, you can share your concerns and advocate for them to work towards passing the Educator's Bill of Rights and other measures to safeguard public education in Texas.

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