Utah’s higher education commissioner says a new law won’t force all of the state’s public colleges and universities to adopt the same prescribed curriculum on Western civilization and the “rise of Christianity” — despite language in the measure that has raised fears among faculty of that.
Commissioner Geoff Landward said Thursday he sees the measure as having more flexibility and academic freedom than the discussions on the coursework changes have so far suggested. It’s not his intention to see it expanded wholesale across the eight schools in the Utah System of Higher Education, which all have different missions.
“I don’t think this pilot makes sense systemwide,” he said during the Utah Board of Higher Education’s monthly meeting.
It’s the first time Landward has spoken publicly about SB334, coming a few days after Gov. Spencer Cox signed the bill into law while calling it one of “the most important bills of the 2025 legislative session.”
The measure was pushed by Sen. John Johnson, R-North Ogden, an emeritus professor at Utah State University and firm advocate that university students receive a classically liberal education.
His bill starts with changes at USU, through a newly created and state-funded Center for Civic Education. The center has been directed to hire and work with faculty to redesign the general education curriculum (the introductory courses that all students take before specializing in a major). Those classes are supposed to teach students broadly about writing, reading, critical thinking and how to be an engaged citizen in a democracy.
Johnson held back tears during a Senate floor debate earlier this month, arguing that “we’ve moved away from” that tradition and “the academic foundations that made this country great.” There are too many options now for general education, he feels, and they’re not focused.
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Under his plan, USU will be required to teach all students three general education classes in the humanities that focus on the “perennial questions about the human condition,” with texts drawing largely from Western civilization — particularly ancient Israel, Greece and Rome — and books about “the rise of Christianity.”
One additional three-credit class needs to be about American institutions and the founding of the United States.
Faculty at USU have raised concerns that the measure usurps their authority to set the curriculum — which is supposed to be the domain of professors — and enforces an out-of-date model. Professors and staff at other schools, too, have said they don’t support the changes and don’t want it pushed at their institutions.
The bill says the effort at USU is supposed to be a pilot that’s then examined for how it might be deployed statewide at all public schools. It directs the Utah Board of Higher Education to “develop a proposed core of system-wide general education courses aligned with the educational principles of this section.”
But that’s where Landward believes the bill gives the board leeway. It doesn’t say that the board is required to institute that curriculum once it is developed or what the curriculum has to look like, specifically.
“I think there is misinformation going around that the intent here is we run this pilot and it’s instituted statewide,” he said to the board. “I don’t think that’s accurate.”
The measure only directs members to review what was learned in the pilot and see what might be applicable to expand in 2029, Landward said. That’s a much more mild and measured implementation than expected.
“That’s our job to determine,” he added in a comment to The Salt Lake Tribune. “What that looks like could vary widely. It could be one course. It could be multiple courses. It could be specific to the type of institution. Or our proposal could be something not yet contemplated.”
He said he worked with Johnson behind the scenes to ensure that faculty, schools and the board had the ultimate say on what happened — and that includes at USU, where both Landward and interim President Alan L. Smith have both said the specific curriculum, even in the pilot, will still be developed by faculty.
“That is a responsibility that we have to protect,” Landward said. “The worry is this is the first step in the Legislature determining for all curriculum and courses, that this is what we teach. … We’ll watch this carefully.”
USU had already been in the process of reframing its general education program, so it was a good fit there, Landward said. And it might work for a similar school, like the University of Utah, he said; but that doesn’t mean the same model is appropriate for a small school like Snow College.
That diverges from the conversations that happened on Capitol Hill in the final days of the session as the bill was pushed through. And it’s different from what Cox said when he signed the bill.
“This curriculum,” the governor said, “will be a model for all our public institutions in Utah and nationally.”
But Johnson told The Tribune on Thursday that he’s fine with the program at USU serving as a pilot and seeing how that goes. “We’re trying something out to see whether it’s appropriate for the whole system,” he said, adding that it might not be.
“It may be the whole thing. It may be pieces of it,” he added, echoing Landward.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Sen. John Johnson, R-Ogden, at the Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025.
Johnson also said the classes and works listed in the measure are “not a religious thing,” despite the explicit focus on Christianity, but rather a look at how those forces shaped societies and great thinkers.
He also said he appreciates the freedom of professors to develop the curriculum, because he was a professor himself. The bill is just meant to give broad strokes, he added, of the texts that should be included.
In a blog post, he explained it this way: “Legislators set the destination; faculty determine the route. SB334 simply reorients the compass toward a civic goal that is as old as the university itself — forming citizens capable of sustaining a free society.”
Johnson had introduced a bill last year on general education that he has since said was “too prescriptive” and was ultimately killed in committee. The Utah Board of Higher Education took the rare step then to oppose that measure.
“Our beef was not with the content, necessarily,” Landward said Thursday, but with Johnson developing a program without engaging with school leaders. “We felt that was inappropriate and a mistake.”
Johnson said SB334 this session was meant to correct that and be more open. He also said faculty have 18 other credits in general education that they can teach what they’d like to.
The commissioner said the bill still wasn’t a perfect compromise. “We couldn’t really find a solution that [Johnson] was satisfied with and also addressed the concerns that we had,” he said. But it was better.
He intends for a working group of the Utah Board of Higher Education to review the recommendations from the USU pilot and determine what was valuable — “if anything.”
Board member Jon Cox, a distant cousin of Gov. Cox, questioned if the institutions should be reforming their own general education programs in the meantime, particularly with the governor making it clear that he favors that action. The governor also names who sits on the Utah Board of Higher Education.
If they don’t act, Jon Cox said, there will probably be another bill from the Legislature before 2029 pushing that.
Schools, he said, shouldn’t have a “Cheesecake Factory-type menu” for their introductory courses.
Landward agreed that the system, overall, should make sure that general education classes teach students the basics and also are clear about their purpose: What are students supposed to get out of the course? Why are they taking it? How does that apply to their life?
“We need to rethink general education, and it shouldn’t look like it does now,” he said. “There is merit to what USU is doing. … And we should take advantage of this opportunity to make our offerings better.”
Already, the board has limited general education curriculum to no more than 30 credit hours.
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