FROM THE DAILY NOUS: “One way public universities in Utah can earn back part of the $60 million in funding that the state legislature took from their budgets is by “showing that [the funds] will be reallocated for high-demand and high-wage majors as the state pushes for higher education to be more job-focused,” according to the Salt Lake Tribune.”

Professor Cynthia Stark, chair of the Department of Philosophy, also recently described other policy/programmatic changes:

• The state legislature’s passage of an “anti-DEI” bill that the university interpreted as requiring that the Women’s Resource Center, the Black Cultural Center, and the LGBT Resource Center be shuttered.
• The state’s imposition of a “bathroom bill” requiring trans university students to use locker rooms aligned with the sex assigned at birth
• The banning of Pride flags in public spaces and faculty offices, if they can be seen through a window
• The state requires faculty to post their syllabi in a publicly searchable database.
• The start of the implementation of a plan “mandating that all students take general education courses on the topics of Western civilization and the rise of Christianity” that will be rolled out at all public universities in Utah
• A new policy, announced by the university president, “that returned missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be eligible to receive up to 12 college credits for their service to the church.”
• A rash of administrative changes—a revamped advising system, a consolidation of the university’s colleges, a plethora of new “student success initiatives” —that have “imposed a crushing amount of (mostly stultifying) work on deans and department chairs.”