More than a dozen states have banned DEI offices, DEI statements, and trainings in the past year and a half with varying degrees of success. Some states like Utah and Wyoming have made mostly paper changes. Other states like Texas and Florida have seen actual dismantling of DEI offices. Dismantling DEI offices limits the top-down corruption of universities. But it does little to establish a better educational vision in higher education or to change the direction of corrupt disciplines. After the DEI bans, boards of trustees, university presidents, and state legislatures must begin the hard work of restoring educational excellence in workforce education, preserving our civilizational heritage, and extending scientific literacy.

　　Planning for such restoration requires a more comprehensive dismantling of the DEI goals and infrastructure. Consider the example of Texas, whose universities still have DEI sown into their strategic plans.

　　Texas AM removed its 2010 Diversity Plan from its website, as well as its more radical 2020 State of Diversity Report. Yet the goals of defunct diversity plans persist in AM’s university strategic plan. Among the goals in this plan are hopes to “close equity gaps” among student admissions and retention and in faculty hiring. It seeks further to foster “a climate of respect and inclusivity” while addressing “campus climate and equity issues proactively.” Texas Tech University still operates under the strategic plan entitled, A Foundation for the Next Century, A Pathway to 2025, which aims to “advance and sustain a campus climate and culture characterized by accessibility, inclusiveness, and high academic quality” and to “improve the quality and diversity of the incoming student body.” Basically, the same language is in strategic plans at the University of North Texas and the University of Houston.

　　Despite prohibitive state legislation, DEI is embedded in strategic plans throughout Texas. As the Texas legislature deliberated about banning DEI administration, only Texas Southern and the University of Texas Permian Basin are among the 37 in Texas with no DEI in their strategic plans or no distinct DEI strategic plans. Universities sit between two stools. Strategic plans demand that universities perform DEI functions, while Texas law prohibits them. Universities have tried to sit on both stools.

　　As the Texas example shows, universities must undertake strategic planning to eliminate top-down DEI. That would mean removing strategic objectives informed by equity, inclusivity, faculty, and student diversity from future strategic plans and crafting a new, positive view of the university’s educative mission. More importantly, curriculum, administration, and hiring must be adapted to different objectives. In Texas, for example, none of the big universities define a good education in their previous strategic plans. Their plans include anodyne pablum like aiming to “educate and empower a diverse student body” (University of Houston) or “creating engaging and supportive learning environments” (North Texas). Instead of process-based goals, new strategic plans should prioritize specific education outcomes. A new strategic objective for general education might read: emphasizing Western civilization and scientific literacy in the general education while eliminating courses infused with identity politics or those not concerned with foundational knowledge from the general education. Plans should eliminate academic and degree programs that are low-performing and whose professional standards are infused with critical theories, while, at the same time, growing academic units that promote scientific literacy, knowledge of Western heritage, and workforce preparation.

　　Aside from defining specific areas of learning and emphasizing excellence, standards, and results, new strategic plans could insist on developing exit exams to measure student learning in American history, Western civilization, mathematics, basic science literacy, statistical literacy, and literature. Students should get pre-tests on these matters when they enter the university as freshmen and then take tests upon graduation to see how much value the university is adding. Eventually, like Oxford, passing comprehensive exams might be necessary to graduate. Exit exams should be reintroduced not merely as a reaction to the prevalence of artificial intelligence, but also as a way of ensuring that students know something when they graduate.

　　Revamping General Education

　　Currently, many state legislatures have governing laws about what should be accomplished in general education. For example, Texas requires six credits in American history to graduate, while a proposal to revamp general education failed in Utah last year. Idaho, meanwhile, has only process-based standards.

　　Florida provides a model for culling unsuitable courses from general education. Florida mandated a telos for general education: it aims to create “an informed citizen” who will “promote and preserve the constitutional republic through traditional, historically accurate” and “foundational” coursework.

　　Florida’s approach has two planks. First, general education core courses “may not distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics … or is based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and [that they] were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.” On this basis, Florida’s State Board of Education eliminated Principles of Sociology from the general education core in Florida universities, and colleges and administrators have culled ideological, non-foundational courses from the general education. At Florida International University, for instance, the Board of Trustees removed 22 courses from general education pursuant to these laws, including “Anthropology of Race and Ethnicity,” “History of Women in the United States,” “Sociology of Gender,” and “Introduction to LGBT+ Studies.”

　　Second, Florida law requires that courses in the general education must “provide broad foundational knowledge to help students develop intellectual skills and habits that enable them to become more effective lifelong learners.” “Unproven, speculative, or exploratory content” is left for electives or for upper division classes. Courses must also provide instruction on “historical background and philosophical foundations of Western civilization” based on source documents.

　　Any attempt to impose criteria on state colleges and universities violates the principle of academic freedom. Or so we are told.

　　Florida’s approach might inform future strategic plans at universities throughout the country, which could aim to foster students interested and able to defend constitutional government in the United States through general education offerings. Legislatures can help such strategic planning to come about through legal mandates at the level of politics.

　　Program Review

　　Another element of higher education reform and strategic planning involves periodic program review. This will be especially relevant as enrollment declines induce universities around the country to trim budgets and cut academic offerings. Texas AM has recently made moves toward more effective program reviews, deactivating “low performing” minors and certificate programs that average fewer than ten graduates in the past two years. Included among the cut programs were minors in LGBTQ+ and Asian Studies and certificates in “Diversity and Social Justice,” “Popular Culture,” and “Performing Social Activism.” Courses “associated with the deactivated programs will be unaffected,” however. None of these programs were self-standing departments. Such moves, while important markers, are the boyhood of genuine reform.

　　Strategic plans should favor program efficiency, but also promote scientific literacy, cultivate an appreciation for our civilizational heritage, or promote workforce education. Are university departments providing an education worth the investment? The legislature and boards of trustees should consider metrics for departmental performance. Departments where the number of faculty outnumber the number of majors, for instance, would hardly be worth keeping around. Ratios should be discovered, after careful deliberation, to identify the tipping point for putting academic disciplines on notice. Perhaps the ratio is 3 majors for every faculty member. Perhaps five. In any event, some measure should trigger program review.

　　Comprehensive program review should not simply be centered on student-demand metrics, financial performance at the department level, and predictions about market demands for majors. Boards of trustees should also decide which departments offer a vision of education inconsistent with the state’s overall education goals. Departments with a corrupt and corrupting vision of education should receive demerits during program review. I have laid out a process for accomplishing this elsewhere.

　　Conservatives and libertarians have long been reluctant to regulate institutions of higher education. “Free and open inquiry” are the conservative watchwords. Governments will have a hard time imposing a positive vision of education through legislative and administrative action. Any attempt to impose criteria on state colleges and universities violates the principle of academic freedom. Or so we are told. There is wisdom in these critiques. It is impossible for a legislature to impose what is being taught in every classroom. Politicians cannot conduct academic hiring. Administrators will be much better at getting rid of bad educational goals than in building a positive vision, since they will depend on academics to deliver the education.

　　Still, states build universities to achieve certain goals—to gain informed citizens, cultivate an appreciation for the civilization, advance scientific progress. They have provided money and infrastructure to achieve these goals. States can and must demand that its goals be achieved. State legislatures and boards of trustees should eagerly seek to ensure that the public’s legitimate concern about the nature of education is vindicated.

　　According to these legitimate goals, legislation could mandate a revamp of the general education and program reviews. Boards of trustees would have to head them up. Such an undertaking would be an example of national conservativism in action—attempts to use political power in ways that conservatives with a limited-government bent have been reluctant to use. What we have learned is that, given the incentive structures that exist today, involvement from state legislatures to articulate the goals of education will be essential if higher education is to accomplish something better.

　　New centers, colleges, and schools are modes whereby to build universities back better. New centers and colleges are, if you will pardon the metaphor, behind enemy lines. Professionalism in such centers and colleges, while crucial, will not be enough. All such new modes and orders are fragile and prone to cooption. Colleagues from the traditional university will hound and slander the new units. Defending centers and new colleges demand a fighting spirit, one preferably aided by strategic plans and visionary politics. Restoration may require ongoing culling of corrupt programsand eventually a reevaluation of how universities themselves are organized.