Fighting Over Higher Education: A Texas Tradition (November 10, 2025)

by Scott Sosebee

Unless you have been either willfully avoiding it, or perhaps on an extended trip out of the country, you are no doubt aware that Texas—really the entire nation—is engaged in an ideological debate over the efficacy and the content of higher education. People on one side of the debate are questioning whether or not the curriculum in Texas’ colleges and universities are actually worth the cost of that education and/or if that education is “politically biased” toward a certain—most would call it a liberal bent—while those on the opposite side not only defend the effectiveness of a post-high school degree but that there is no inherent bias in the delivery of that education. It has become a vocal and acrimonious debate, and I have no desire to place myself in the middle of those brickbats, lest one finds the side of my head. Instead, my intention is to provide an honest reflection while at the same time offering that such a debate is nothing new, and has been one that has plagued the state—and the nation—on a number of occasions in the past.

The liberal-conservative dichotomy within the context of the state’s higher education system today is nothing new and is best examined when one looks at how it has been manifested at the University of Texas at Austin, the state’s constitutionally-designated “flagship” university. When it was established in 1883, Texas was a largely rural state and its education system was rudimentary at best. There were scarcely a half-dozen high schools in the state, which meant that very few young people were even qualified to enroll and attend such an institution. However, that did not mean that the newly-founded college did not have its enemies. One state legislator from one of those rural areas declared that colleges should never be allowed in the state because they were “hotbeds of immorality, profligacy, and licentiousness. They are an affront to God.” Perhaps it was such opposition that led the legislature to be frugal with its direct funding of the university in its earliest years, which caused it to struggle in its earliest years. They did, however, give to the new school two million acres of state land—way out in West Texas. That land and the profits from it sat unrealized for four decades, but that changed in 1923 when the Santa Rita oil gusher blew in near Big Lake. That vast field became one of the biggest oil finds in the history of the nation and so enriched—and continues to do so—that today only Harvard has a larger endowment than the University of Texas system.

That funding—and the growth and changing dynamics of the state’s population—allowed the University of Texas to become one of the major institutions of higher learning in the South. Just between 1920 and 1925 enrollment increased almost 600%, this while the population of Texas grew only at what was still a robust 55%. The University began to attract scholars of national prominence, the library and archives became world-class, and the products of the institution became political, social, and business leaders of not just the state but the nation. By any metric, the University of Texas was a success, one that could contribute and lead a state that was also changing from a rural backwater socially and economically to one that had the potential to lead the nation in such categories.

Despite such positives, not everyone in the state was happy with the tenor of higher education in the state as many questioned not just the need for such an institution but how that education was affecting the intellectual temper of Texas. Such points of conflict flared into a conflagration in 1943, an incident that would become one of the most infamous events in the annals of the debate over academic freedom. The rupture began over a letter written by a group of economics professors to the “Dallas Morning News.” At the time, there was a national debate on the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, a New Deal era law that made the discrimination against union members (and, theoretically, at least) and non-White workers illegal. Those who leaned liberal supported the law as it was written, while conservative politicians and supporters wanted the law, at least, tempered. Almost immediately, members of the UT Board of Regents—all of whom had been appointed by conservative Democrat governors Coke Stevenson and “Pappy” O’Daniel—decided that they would investigate not only the academic ideologies of those professors, but that of almost all the faculty members at the University, including examining and objecting to a number of books on assigned reading lists in the UT English Department. The Board subsequently did not approve the reappointment contracts of four of the offending Economics professors, and three other administrators and faculty members—all of those in the English Department—were asked to resign. Theoretically, the UT faculty had academic freedom protection from termination on ideological grounds by tenure, but the policy was vague and enforcement was weak. The UT employees, however, found a supporter in President Homer P. Rainey. President Rainey refused to do the board’s bidding and accused them of violations of academic freedom. The Board, infuriated that Rainey would not follow their direction, fired the President on November 1, 1943.

Rainey’s dismissal did not end the impasse. The next day, flags flew at half-mast on campus and a statement declared that they would remain that way until Rainey was reinstated. Students refused to attend classes or pay fees until the same result took place. On November 3, students and faculty gathered in a huge rally and marched into downtown Austin, demanding that Rainey’s dismissal be reversed. The Association of Southern Universities placed the University of Texas on probation until not only was Rainey reinstated but so were the dismissed professors. In the end, however, it did not matter. The Board refused to budge, and they—along with the Governor’s office—refused to take action on either demand and it would be more than a decade before UT policy would fully protect against such actions. President Rainey would go on to run for governor on a generally liberal platform in 1944, but he was defeated in a run-off by Beauford Jester.

While the current squabble is making headlines, in many ways it remains a political and social extension of a larger battle that has raged within the state for well over a hundred years, one that seems to have no signs of ending.

The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.