The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board released its inaugural study on the impacts of Senate Bill 17, which outlawed the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices (DEI) on public colleges and universities.
Universities across the state closed DEI offices this year and fired staff to comply with the new law that went into effect in 2024. The study released by the THECB on Sunday doesn’t show the impact SB 17 had this year because it is only looking at data from 2022 and 2023. The board will treat the data in this initial study as a baseline moving forward. It plans to release a study on the impact of the bill every two years.
The report looks at six metrics: application rate, acceptance rate, matriculation rate, retention rate, grade point average and graduation rate. Critics of the law point to the data in this study as proof that DEI offices are needed on college campuses, while the author of the bill itself says it’s proof DEI is the reason some groups are lagging behind their classmates.
Read more at Concho Valley.
