The Utah legislature is currently considering a bill (Senate Bill 334) that could jump-start a major reform of America’s higher education system. The bill, sponsored by Senator John Johnson, would require every student at Utah State University to take a full year-and-a-half course in Western civilization and an additional one-semester course in American civics.
The bill describes these courses in some detail and ensures that they will be taught under the auspices of an independent academic unit (called the Center for Civic Excellence) dedicated to the principles of classic liberal education.
The bill also lays a foundation for extending this pilot arrangement to every student at every public university in the state. The potential transformative effect of this bill on public higher education is on a par with what we’ve seen to date in Florida. In this case, however, the reform comes by a different route.
Yes, there are potential problems. Although this bill is directly inspired by the model General Education Act (which I co-authored with Jenna Robinson of the Martin Center for Academic Renewal and David Randall of the National Association of Scholars), it is also in the nature of a compromise with the administration of Utah State University. The wording of SB 334 provides just enough wiggle room that faculty members determined to undermine legislative intent might be able to do so — at least to a degree.
On the other hand, I have reason to believe that the administrators charged with carrying out the new law will be acting in good faith. The bill also contains strong transparency provisions. These are likely to expose any serious problems and move the legislature to strengthen the bill next session, if need be. Senator Johnson, the sponsor who has expertly managed this ambitious reform effort over these last two years, is unlikely to take efforts to undermine the new law lightly. That is why he inserted tough transparency provisions in the first place.
I’ll explore the dangers and their potential remedies in a moment. But here is the key point. Should this bill pass — and it has a very real chance of doing so — it will be a game changer nationally. I have argued that state legislatures have the power to set general education requirements at public universities. There are numerous precedents for this, but there is no doubt that Utah SB 334 breaks new ground.
Following the strategy of the model General Education Act, SB 334 not only describes and requires classic general education courses, but it also entrusts the teaching of those courses to an independent academic unit (the Center for Civic Excellence) dedicated to a traditional “great books” approach. After a year or so of pilot study, the bill would extend this approach to every public university student in the state.
In some respects, SB 334 goes beyond even Florida’s strategy. Florida has radically reformed a single small campus (New College). It has also set up a “center for civic thought” at a large university (the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida). And the Sunshine State has made some broad tweaks to its general education requirements. The Utah bill combines these approaches, while potentially applying them, after some pilot study at the Utah State campus, to every school in the state university system.
Last year, the Utah legislature considered a bill (SB 226) closely based on the model General Education Act. That bill mandated an extensive program of traditional general education and created an independent School of General Education to run the newly required courses. The new School of General Education was given the right to hire new faculty members dedicated to, and expert in, classic great books education. At the same time, the flagship campus of the University of Utah (which was to be the home of the new system under the 2024 bill) was instructed to close down existing programs and shed current faculty members in equal numbers to the new faculty hired. This exercise of “program discontinuance” made last year’s bill revenue-neutral, effectively financing the hiring of new faculty.
Unsurprisingly, the University of Utah faculty was unhappy with the bill. After all, many professors stood to lose their jobs. The legislature was intrigued, however. While the bill was held up in committee, numerous legislators urged the sponsor, Senator Johnson, to work with the universities and come up with a compromise. That is exactly what Johnson has done.
It turns out that quite independently of Senator Johnson’s efforts, another university — Utah State — was moving on its own to reform its program of general education. Administrators at Utah State had become convinced that offering hundreds of hyper-specialized courses to fulfill graduation requirements was both shortchanging students and turning them off to education.
These administrators had started looking into the possibility of reducing the usual smorgasbord of general education courses to a relatively small set of classes covering essential knowledge. Utah State’s evolving plan wasn’t quite a universal mandate for Western Civ or American civics, but it was in that general vicinity. Just when some of the more traditionally inclined administrators and faculty at Utah State were considering this approach, they discovered Johnson’s 2024 bill. That led to extended negotiations between Johnson and Utah State, with this year’s SB 334 the result.
From my point of view, the final product of this compromise, if less than ideal, is nonetheless a huge positive step forward. Let’s take a closer look.
The bill’s year-and-a-half-long required great books course in Western civilization isn’t explicitly given that name. In fact, the course isn’t even exclusively about the West. The bill says that the course will focus on texts “predominantly” from Western civilization. Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, and Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist, are listed as authors of exemplary non-Western texts.
Even so, the course description given in the bill is overwhelmingly focused on Western civilization. The course is to cover topics like ancient Israel, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, the rise of Christianity, medieval Europe, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the post-Enlightenment. The listed exemplary texts include Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Shakespeare, and such.
Clearly, the course as described is “predominantly” — even overwhelmingly — focused on the West. (By the way, I don’t object to studying non-Western cultures. The model General Education Act includes just such a course. I do give priority to the West, however, and a single coherent course focused on the West provides necessary clarity, in my view.)
The wording of SB 334 is loose enough that attempts to circumvent the clear intent of the law are possible. It’s not out of the question that someone could try to insert just under 50 percent of readings from non-Western cultures and then claim that the course was still “predominantly” Western. And unlike last year’s bill, which was explicit about the need for readings from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and Catholic and Protestant thinkers, it is not impossible that faculty members hostile to religion might attempt to omit such material — although it’s hard to see how you can cover ancient Israel, the rise of Christianity, and the Reformation without reading the Bible, Augustine, Luther, and such.
Fortunately, SB 334 includes a stringent syllabus transparency provision. This requires every section of the course to post an accurate syllabus, with the instructor’s name, every required or recommended reading, a description of the subject of each lecture and discussion, etc. Moreover, the vice provost in charge of the new Center for Civic Excellence established by the bill has ultimate approval over course syllabi. There is good reason to believe that the person who will fill that role will prevent abuse of the course descriptions in the bill.
The head of the new center will almost certainly be one of the key movers behind Utah State’s earlier effort to adopt a traditional general education curriculum. Remember, that effort was well under way even before the university linked up with Senator Johnson.
Finally, Johnson himself is pretty clear about the intent of the bill. I’ve had a chance to speak with him at some length, and I’d be surprised if he were to allow any serious subversion of legislative intent without taking steps next session to revise the language of the bill.
It was Johnson’s idea, by the way, to turn the new Center for Civic Excellence at Utah State into a pilot program for the entire Utah public university system. To be honest, I’m a bit torn by this ambition. On the one hand, it’s thrilling to think of every student in the state taking great courses in Western Civ and American civics. On the other hand, it’s a real challenge to find the right professors to teach these courses. That’s hard enough to do at a single university, let alone at every public institution in the state. There may be a core of faculty interested in the classic great books approach at Utah State, but that sort of professor is likely thin on the ground at other Utah public universities.
And yet, universalizing a limited number of courses totaling only three semesters is not out of the question. One way to get there is training. It’s notable that the University of Utah has added a provision to the bill for faculty “professional development.” In other words, faculty members who teach the new courses will be trained to the task. That will certainly help to make any statewide expansion of this requirement work.
One of the reasons fewer courses are required by this year’s bill than in the proposal of 2024 is that the provision for “program discontinuance” — shutting down programs and letting go of existing faculty to balance out new hires — is gone. Undoubtedly, removing the threat of faculty firings has helped to bring Utah State around to supporting the bill. Yet it also leaves no money for what’s really needed — the hiring of the sort of faculty who really do believe in a classic great books approach.
Here is where the legislature can help. If they want this experiment — with huge implications for both Utah and the country as a whole — to work, the legislature should consider appropriating money to allow the new Center for Civic Excellence to hire faculty dedicated to classic general education. New hires could make the difference between success and failure.
In the medium to long term, a successful Center for Civic Excellence will almost certainly lead to a reduction in existing faculty, even without an explicit provision demanding it. In practice, once all students are required to take a small set of fundamental courses in order to graduate, there simply won’t be enough students left to take the hundreds of hyper-specialized courses offered by existing faculty. At some point, this is bound to lead to a reduction of faculty who are not part of the new center. So paying for new hires in the short term will allow for faculty reductions in the long term.
Again, the bottom line is that Utah SB 334 is a game changer. It sets a precedent for entirely new possibilities. Imagine if one of the new traditionalist centers for “civic thought” now being introduced at universities across the country were put in charge of courses in Western civilization, U.S. history, and such, for every student on campus — even at a huge school like Utah State. Then imagine applying this reform to every public university in a given state. At the moment, the recently established “centers for civic thought” in various states reach only the relatively few students who sign up for their courses and events. But on the model of SB 334, each small center could now set the tone for education at an entire public university.
There’s still a great case for doing what Florida has already done — applying a broader set of required courses in the classic mode to a single small state school. That makes it easier to find the appropriate faculty. A single small school following the classic model will also likely draw a huge number of applicants, thereby increasing its selectivity and prestige. Over time, such as school can grow.
But SB 334 creates a whole new set of options for states to consider — a less ambitious but still very powerful set of required traditional courses taught by a dedicated cohort of trained professors to every student at a large state university — and potentially every public university student in a given state. That is a higher ed reform breakthrough.
Let’s hope the Utah State legislature agrees. It seems to be headed that way, at least in part, because Governor Spencer Cox is solidly behind it. SB 334 — inspired by the model General Education Act, expertly shepherded through a series of hurdles over two years by Senator John Johnson, and hammered out with the collaboration of administrators at Utah State University — may soon usher in a new era of higher education reform.