In 2024, the Legislature passed seven bills aimed at higher education and cut funding by 1.5%. Several of those bills attacked faculty tenure and shared campus governance, turned college presidents into the equivalent of CEOs, and made sure that many of our students (and staff) no longer felt welcome because of diversity, equity and inclusion hostility.
The 2025 session may prove worse starting with a 10% budget cut proposed by the Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz. Like others without a college degree, Schultz may see much of what we do on a college campus as not directly tied to post-graduate employment (as if that is the only reason to attend college).
This 10% cut is forwarded in the name of “efficiency,” which translated means that if your degree program doesn’t directly lead to a job, then it is obviously inefficient. More than one-third of the Legislature handsomely profits off real estate (no degree needed), so why waste money on literature, art, or history?
In the name of “workforce alignment,” lawmakers want to turn the state’s universities into job training centers. The trouble is that Utah already has eight technical colleges, and a dozen or so private and for-profit colleges that specialize in technical education. These are the places for job-ready training. Universities have a clearly different mission that benefits students and the state in myriad ways.
Nowhere in the University of Utah’s mission statement, for example, does it pledge job training: The U. “fosters student success by preparing students for lives of impact as leaders and citizens. We generate and share new knowledge, discoveries, and innovations, and we engage local and global communities to promote education, health, and quality of life.”
The Utah Board of Higher Education is the governing body for the Utah System of Higher Education or USHE, which comprises the state’s 16 public colleges and universities. The governor appoints the board members, and the Legislature grants them the power to control, oversee and regulate USHE. The 10 board members for USHE seem to include few academics, just corporate leaders, business people, lobbyists and prominent community folks. Furthermore, of USHE’s 14-member executive team, only one holds a Ph.D. and was an actual university faculty member.
Apparently, no real experience nor expertise as a long-time member of a college or university campus community is a prerequisite for these jobs. Then again, if no bona fides are needed for Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees, why should we expect higher education to be run by college and university veterans? Do you need to be a real doctor to practice medicine or a pilot to fly an airplane?
Let me be clear: Not everyone needs to go to college. In fact, many shouldn’t, and there are plenty of decent jobs that don’t require a degree; even the high-tech industry is dropping some degree requirements. Unfortunately, Utah has pushed nearly every public university to be “open enrollment.” If you have a high school diploma and tuition money, you’re admitted. USHE then wonders why we struggle with student retention, have high drop-out rates and long graduation time periods. To them, those metrics look inefficient.
And let’s also be very clear about costs. Tuition and fees have jumped from $1,815 in 1999 to $9,228 in 2024 at Utah State University because the state has systematically starved higher education funding for a generation. It’s not that it costs 408% more to educate a student; it’s the fact that Utah has shifted investment in education away from tax money and toward tuition money. Colleges have had to raise tuition to make up the difference, and this has forced students and their families to take out massive student loans.
So this is not really about the money (the state has more than $1 billion in its rainy day fund and wastes tax money on endless good old boy boondoggles), this is about control and power. The State Legislature (and USHE apparently) doesn’t like professors challenging their myopic, homogenized and conservative world view. On a whole host of issues, the State Legislature is “anti-higher education.” And by tightening already modest budgets, the Legislature can continue to exert its will over Utah colleges and universities. As this meddling becomes more public and detrimental, we’ll lose our most talented students and faculty recruits, especially from out of state.
So, expect more legislative attacks on higher education this year, and on general education, in particular. And don’t expect Gov. Spencer Cox to get in the way. Of the 1,166 bills passed in 2023 and 2024, our rubber-stamp governor vetoed seven. Unlike the timid rollover in response to the punitive DEI legislation, I hope higher education administrators and USHE push back on budget cuts, hard. Otherwise, my colleagues and I (if deemed efficient) may soon all be working for Utah Vocational Tech, with no broad education required.
Eric Ewert
Eric C. Ewert is a professor in and chair of Weber State University’s Department of Geography, Environment & Sustainability. His current research and teaching interests lie in environmental studies, the American West, population, historical and economic geography and geospatial technologies. Views are the opinion of the author, and in no way represent Weber State University.
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