Accreditor Mum as Texas Politicians Take Curricular Control

In recent months, two of the biggest Texas public university systems—Texas A&M and Texas Tech Universities—passed comprehensive restrictions on how faculty can teach about gender, sexuality and race. Faculty at both institutions, as well as free speech advocates nationwide, have decried the new policies as gross violations of academic freedom.

But those seeking to fight against the state-mandated changes can’t turn to the federal government for help—leaders at both institutions have cited federal rules and executive orders as justification for their decisions. And as of now, the accreditor overseeing the Texas institutions doesn’t appear likely to step in.

Accreditors are tasked with ensuring that universities maintain fiduciary responsibility, good student outcomes, academic quality and effective governance. To earn their stamp of approval—which is required for an institution’s students to be eligible for federal financial aid—universities must adhere to the accreditor’s standards. Both Texas A&M and Texas Tech are accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, which requires that faculty must have primary responsibility for the “content, quality and effectiveness” of the curriculum. These new policies, handed down by systems’ governor-appointed boards, appear to violate that standard, experts say. But SACS hasn’t taken any action in response.

The association has no current sanctions or open investigations into Texas A&M or Texas Tech, said Stephen Pruitt, president of the association. He also said the accreditor hasn’t received any complaints about either university, including from faculty. Both institutions are in good standing—Texas Tech’s accreditation was renewed in 2025 for another 10 years. The higher education watchdog is limited in its ability to respond to the curricular policies because it cannot require its member institutions to adhere to a standard that would force them to violate state law or policy, Pruitt said.

“We have always made it a practice that we don’t hold institutions accountable when there’s a state law that may [contradict] our standards,” he said. “At the end of the day, states rule the day.”

The presidents of both Texas Tech’s and Texas A&M’s American Association of University Professors chapters said they are considering filing complaints in the coming months. If they do submit a complaint, SACS would be required to investigate it, said Antoinette Flores, director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a left-leaning think tank. That said, she’s not optimistic that a faculty complaint would yield any action from the accreditor.

“If they are already taking the position that this is a state law, then I think they are probably unlikely to take it as a serious issue,” Flores said.

Mike Gavin, president and CEO of the Alliance for Higher Education, has also heard accreditors describe their power as limited within the bounds of state law. But the policies barring instruction on gender and sexuality go “way beyond” what Texas law requires and “[violate] academic freedom in the process,” he said. Ten years ago, SACS’ inaction on these issues “would have shocked me,” he added.

SACS doesn’t need to receive a complaint to investigate. Reports in the media, of which there have been many, are enough to prompt a probe, Flores said. Pruitt’s explanation that the accreditor can’t act against state law is “typical in the moment that we are in,” said Flores. But “it is not typical historically.”

SACS v. the Southern States

SACS has intervened in the past when one of its institutions was threatened by political interference. For example, in 1930, former Mississippi governor Theodore Bilbo instructed the presidents of several Mississippi public institutions to fire 179 faculty members and replace them with his political allies. He also fired the presidents of the three of the public universities: the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State College for Women and Mississippi A&M (which is now Mississippi State University). In response, SACS suspended degrees from all four state universities until 1932.

The accreditor has also intervened in Texas before. SACS placed the University of Texas on probation in 1945 amid a dispute between the board and then-president Homer Price Rainey, citing concerns about “undue influence” by the board into the administration. The university remained on probation until SACS was assured of “full observance of its principles and standards.”

More recently, SACS’s attempt to protect academic freedom in Florida was met with pushback from Republican state politicians. The association sent two requests for information in 2022; one went to Florida State University while investigating a potential conflict of interest when it considered Richard Corcoran, then a member of the system Board of Governors, in its presidential search. The second went to the University of Florida after the institution barred three professors from testifying against state voting rights restrictions.

Neither probe led to a formal sanction, but Florida Republican legislators railed against the accreditor; Gov. Ron DeSantis called SACS and others a “monopoly of the woke accreditation cartels.” Florida lawmakers soon after passed a bill requiring all public institutions to change accreditors every six years, effectively kicking SACS out of the state and paving the way for the new Commission for Public Higher Education. North Carolina did the same a year later. And Texas is on its way; Senate Bill 530, passed and enacted last year, opened up accreditation options in the state and removed SACS as the default accreditor for Texas public institutions. Legislative threats like this one could make it difficult for accreditors to act contrary to the wishes of state politicians, Flores said.

“More and more states are legislating very specific issues that get into faculty governance or institutional autonomy, and accreditors are walking back and not challenging things that they might have otherwise,” she said.

From Colleagues to Competitors

In addition to ducking increased political scrutiny, accreditors have another incentive to acquiesce to states: competition, Gavin said. Ever since the first Trump administration dissolved the regional boundaries among the seven major accrediting bodies—one of which is SACS—they’ve been in competition with one another for dues-paying member institutions. Pruitt said he’s asked all the time whether competition from other accreditors is a concern for him. He says it’s not.

“I have no problem with competition. What I have problems with is when we allow competition to get us into a race to the bottom,” Pruitt said. “There’s two ways that happens. One way is that accreditors lower their standards to a point where anybody can be accredited with no assurance of quality to the students or parents. And the other way is for an institution to decide, ‘We don’t want anybody to measure our quality. We just want to hit the easy button and do as little work as possible.’”

Republican politicians seeking to bring accreditors to heel are relying on dues dependency to achieve their goals, Gavin said. State legislators are “continuously just using money as a weapon to ideologically control the sector.”

To avoid that race to the bottom, accreditors should stick to their guns, Flores explained.

“State laws are going to be in conflict with each other. It makes it hard to create a standard that can be applied across a variety of states,” she said. “What really should be the case is that accreditors set their standards and institutions either meet them or they don’t. If the state doesn’t like a particular standard or it violates a state law, those institutions should then find a new accrediting agency.”

SACS is currently revising its accreditation standards, and there has been “pretty heavy and lively conversation around everything,” including standards related to academic freedom, Pruitt said. The association aims to post a draft of the new standards in May and will seek public feedback. Its board will approve a final version of the new standards in December.

“We want to be the organization that says yes to innovation,” Pruitt said. “But we won’t say yes to anything.”