Faculty Quit as Texas University Orders Them Back to Campus

A number of faculty members at Texas A&M University–Victoria have quit after the university announced in late June that full-time faculty are required to be on campus for eight hours a day, five days per week this fall. As a result, multiple classes have been canceled and some departments are nearly empty, said Teresa Klein, president of the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

“It’s just chaos there,” said Klein, who teaches psychology at Del Mar College. “We’re hearing tears. There’s one woman who just had a baby who quit because she said, ‘I just can’t do this. I can’t be away from my child.’ We have people who are taking care of elderly relatives, and there’s just no way they can do that and be on the road for four hours a day.”

Nearly three-quarters—72 percent—of Texas A&M–Victoria faculty have addresses in the Houston area, which is about a two-hour drive from the Victoria campus. Others live as far away as San Antonio, Klein wrote in a blog post.

According to a June 26 email from the provost, which Klein read to Inside Higher Ed, “faculty are expected to have day-to-day physical presence on campus for in-person interaction with students, administration, other employees and the community,” and “to be on campus 5 days a week and maintain a 40-hour workweek.” Failure to comply “may subject an individual to discipline, up to and including termination.”

Texas A&M–Victoria officials did not answer Inside Higher Ed’s questions about the policy, but said in an emailed statement Monday that “flexibility is not an exemption from accountability.”

“Texas A&M University-Victoria is beginning a new chapter, but the standard is already clear. The Texas A&M University System holds its faculty and employees to high expectations, and A&M-Victoria will rise to meet them,” the statement read. “The university has communicated with faculty for more than a year about teaching loads and the importance of maintaining a meaningful campus presence. These expectations are consistent with Senate Bill 2615, other applicable state law and A&M System policy. This is ultimately about students. A&M-Victoria is welcoming a freshman class 23 percent larger than last year’s. Those students should find an active, vibrant campus and educators who are dedicated to their profession, engaged with their colleagues and invested in student success.”

Texas Senate Bill 2615 took effect in September 2025 and was authored by then senator, now Texas Tech University System Chancellor Brandon Creighton. The bill restricts telework for public higher education faculty members, but does not specifically require they spend 40 hours per week on campus. As of Monday, no other Texas A&M campuses appear to have implemented a similar rule.

In a letter to Texas A&M–Victoria officials, Klein said the rule misapplies the law.

“The bill’s original intent was to encourage a ‘reset’ after COVID, encouraging faculty to return to an on-campus presence following the pandemic, which had necessitated most faculty to work remotely. It is clear the bill’s original intent has now been sufficiently fulfilled,” she wrote. “Its continued application serves only to restrict faculty research, curricular and teaching productivity, innovation and optimal service to the students and taxpayers, while placing unreasonable, undue hardship and disparate effects on the personal and professional lives of faculty and their families.”

In the June email, the provost’s office told faculty members they would need to submit written permission to work remotely at least two weeks before the semester, which started on Aug. 24. Faculty were also asked to sign a form confirming their “understanding and commitment” to the policy by July 15.

Klein told Inside Higher Ed that AAUP members said as many as half of Texas A&M–Victoria’s full-time faculty have resigned, including the entire counselor education department. As of Monday evening, the Texas AAUP was still working to confirm exact numbers.

Texas A&M–Victoria has reached out to employees at Del Mar College, a community college in Corpus Christi, to recruit professors on short notice, Klein said. The Del Mar social sciences department’s administrative assistant received an email from someone at Texas A&M–Victoria stating they were “in a bit of a bind” and asking if anyone could teach a U.S. government class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, according to Klein.

There’s a lot of confusion on the Victoria campus, Klein said. Faculty members in different departments are getting different information—for example, one Texas AAUP member told Klein their department instructed them to check in at 8 a.m. and check out at 5 p.m. every weekday. Other professors were told by Texas A&M–Victoria officials that “if they can’t handle the new rules, they should just quit,” she said.

“The timing of the impromptu mandate has left many faculty scrambling to rearrange their schedules to accommodate, negatively affecting their professional and personal lives and having a possible disproportional, discriminatory and disparate negative effect on female faculty and those with long commutes to campus,” Klein wrote in her letter to Texas A&M–Victoria officials. “We have already seen multiple outstanding faculty … be ‘constructively terminated’—i.e., they had no choice but to ‘terminate themselves’ through resignation because they could not possibly or reasonably comply with this spur-of-the-moment edict.”