Texas A&M System’s new leader hints faculty senates in state leaders’ crosshairs will stay

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When Glenn Hegar was first admitted to Texas A&M University as a teenager, he decided not to go. The College Station school felt like too big a leap from his small, rural hometown of Hockley.

A first-generation student who only knew life on a rice farm, he chose to start at North Harris Montgomery Community College District, now known as Lone Star College. He transferred to Texas A&M a year later when he felt ready for the move.

At the time, he didn’t know what a university system chancellor was, let alone that they lead and advocate for an entire web of campuses. More than 30 years later, Hegar left his job as the state’s chief accountant to become chancellor of the Texas A&M University System at a time when the stakes couldn’t be higher. At the same time Republican state and federal lawmakers are threatening to cut funding unless universities align with their conservative vision, young people are increasingly questioning whether a college degree is worth the cost.

While his predecessor’s tenure was marked by big, bold ideas, the sense of feeling overwhelmed as a student has Hegar focusing first on making Texas A&M feel accessible.

“There are different paths,” he said, “and you need to promote those for different people.”

The Texas Tribune spoke with Hegar last week before he toured the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, part of a 30-day push to visit all 12 universities and eight state agencies under his leadership.

As chancellor, Hegar will oversee a network that educates 158,000 students from College Station to Corpus Christi and Canyon to Commerce. The system also includes state agencies focused on agriculture, transportation, emergency management and more, with a combined annual budget of $7.3 billion.

Hegar, who started as system chancellor on July 1, said he wants to help Texas A&M students complete college, expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of now-defunct DEI programs, and suggested that the schools in the system will likely continue having faculty senates — even after lawmakers have criticized the advising bodies and gave universities permission to disband them.

Here are some takeaways from the conversation.

New rules for faculty’s input

This year, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 37, which shifts oversight of curriculum and hiring from faculty to the governor-appointed university system regents.

The law follows several high-profile clashes between state leaders and faculty senates, which are elected governing bodies made up of professors from colleges across a university who represent their colleagues and work with university leadership on academic matters.

SB 37 calls for the elimination of all faculty senates by Sept. 1, unless regents authorize them. Authorized senates would be capped at 60 members, two for each college. Half would be appointed by university administrators and serve longer terms than those elected by fellow faculty.

Texas A&M University’s faculty senate currently has 120 members, with larger colleges allotted more representation.

Even if faculty senates are permitted to continue, faculty groups argue that the new regulations undermine the principle of shared governance, a long-standing practice of giving professors a voice in key academic decisions. Those include policies on curriculum, hiring and tenure, a status that protects professors from being fired without just cause.

Hegar said that system staff plan to give the board guidance on how to implement the new law at their next meeting, which is scheduled for Aug. 27. But he suggested A&M schools’ faculty senates won’t disappear.

“At this exact time, I don’t see a situation where faculty senates would not exist,” he said.

At Texas A&M University in College Station, the faculty senate has criticized the university system’s board of regents for bending to political pressure, like when it eliminated an LGBTQ studies minor late last year despite faculty’s objections.

Faculty also spoke out in 2023, when the university placed Professor Joy Alonzo on administrative leave after she allegedly criticized Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during a lecture on the opioid crisis.

Former A&M Chancellor John Sharp communicated directly with Patrick after the lecture and promised to investigate and potentially fire her within the week.

When asked how he’d respond in a similar situation, Hegar first said it would likely be handled by the university president, not him.

Hegar — the former Texas state comptroller who ran for reelection in 2022 as “a true conservative defending the values of faith, family and freedom” — ultimately declined to say whether he would defend a professor’s academic freedom and freedom of speech, saying it would depend on the facts of each case.

“But do I think that an individual, whether it’s Glenn Hegar as the chancellor or whether it is a professor, associate professor in a course, should push on you their personal beliefs? No, that’s not our role,” he said. “Our role is to teach you the course material that you’re taking.”

The Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors warns that SB 37 threatens the freedom to learn, teach and research by shifting oversight of curricula to political appointees who may not be subject matter experts. Faculty also criticize SB 2972, which lawmakers passed in response to pro-Palestinian protests. Faculty warn that the law’s vague language could lead to arbitrary restrictions to speech on campus under the pretext of safety.

Back to the basics

Hegar and Sharp, his predecessor, share a political lineage. Both represented the same region in the Texas Senate and later served as state comptroller. But it seems their leadership styles will be markedly different.

Sharp pursued projects that helped shift the perception that Texas A&M was the University of Texas System’s less prestigious, less visible and more rural little brother. Under his leadership, the system acquired a law school in Fort Worth, expanded Kyle Field into the largest football stadium in the state, and beat UT for a contract to help manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Hegar, by contrast, is starting the job focusing less on headline-grabbing expansion and more on student outcomes. He said he wants to make sure A&M students are not dropping out and help them lower their debt when they finish college.

“Those are really important because I think … our first and foremost mission is providing an economic opportunity to that student — that they're better off when they leave than when they got here,” Hegar said.

While 97% of the freshmen at the flagship campus returned for their sophomore year in 2024, only between 70% to 74% of first-time, degree-seeking undergraduate students at Texas A&M schools in Commerce, Kingsville, Texarkana and San Antonio continued their studies after their first year, according to data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Meanwhile, over the past decade, the percentage of undergraduate Aggies finishing school with debt has decreased from 46% to 39% while the average amount they owe has increased from $23,055 to $26,572.

Hegar said he also wants to focus on something he heard repeatedly from presidents of the system’s regional universities during his statewide tour: the need to “own their own backyard” by building stronger partnerships with local communities and businesses, and to expand economic opportunities for the students these campuses were built to serve.

The Texas Legislature recently agreed to transfer the University of Houston-Victoria to the Texas A&M System after local leaders said the region needed agribusiness and engineering programs that weren’t currently available.

Avoiding the culture war crossfire

Hegar expressed a view that many Republican lawmakers have cited as justification for major higher education reforms in the last few years: that colleges’ focus should be on preparing students for the workforce.

One of the biggest shakeups came in 2023 with the banning of diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs at public universities.

When asked whether it matters to him that Texas A&M’s student body reflects the diversity of Texas, Hegar did not give a direct answer. Instead, he questioned the value of focusing on a single metric and said schools might want to consider whether the student body should reflect the state’s diversity, each campus’ regional diversity or the diversity of students entering the public education system. He also said he wasn’t convinced DEI offices had led to more diversity.

The percentage of Black students enrolled at the flagship campus has persistently lagged behind the percentage of Black residents in the state. Some students and alumni of color have said that the university’s refusal to remove a statue of Lawrence Sullivan Ross, a former Texas governor, confederate general and university president, has given them the impression that their voices do not carry equal weight.

“I think what’s most important, no matter what is, is you’re constantly trying to make sure that you are serving the students you have and you’re trying to provide equal opportunities for education across the system and for the state,” he said.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: Lone Star College, Texas A&M Transportation Institute, Texas A&M University, Texas A&M University System, University of Texas System and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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