Testimony of Reagan Dugan, PDE Action Director of Higher Education Initiatives, before the Louisiana House Education Committee Hearing in Support of HB 1063

Thank you Representative Owen and the committee for the opportunity to share. 

My name is Reagan Dugan and I’m the Director of Higher Education Initiatives at PDE Action. We fight indoctrination on campuses across the country to restore a quality, non-political education for all students.

This legislation is part of a growing national consensus. Across the country, state legislatures have concluded that decades of neglect have produced universities increasingly insulated from public accountability, and that their boards are the appropriate corrective.

Florida passed reforms in 2023 and has kept its first place ranking in the nation for higher education. Texas followed last year. Alabama signed similar legislation this month. Florida and Texas have both seen enrollment records this past year. These reforms are not driving students away. 

Louisiana has an opportunity to join this movement at exactly the right moment.

Louisiana currently ranks 50th in the U.S. News and World Report’s Higher Ed state rankings, dead last. Louisiana taxpayers deserve institutions that are accountable for that result.

Thankfully, when Louisiana decides to fix education, those fixes work. The reforms championed by this legislature have taken Louisiana to its highest K-12 ranking in history. HB 1063 is the higher education equivalent of that reform agenda The South is surging. Louisiana should be leading it.

Fundamentally, HB 1063 is about ensuring the authority vested in the management boards of these institutions is clear. These boards exist, per the state constitution, to “supervise and manage the institutions, programs, and properties” of their systems. Requiring boards to publicly certify curriculum and approve hiring in public meetings is an exercise of supervisory and management authority, not an expansion of it. A board cannot “supervise and manage” an institution without authority over what it teaches and who it employs. 

I’ll briefly touch on how some of the provisions of HB 1063 achieve this:

First, Louisiana taxpayers invest over $1 billion annually in public universities. No management board has ever been required to certify that the courses students must take to graduate meet any defined academic standard. HB 1063 requires boards to confirm the courses mandatory to graduate in Louisiana are aligned with three criteria so all graduates are prepared to lead worthwhile professional, civic, and personal lives after graduation, regardless of their major. 

This is about accountability to the taxpayer and the students themselves. No content is banned. No ideology is pushed. 

Second, all administrator and tenure-track hires currently require no public meeting, no advance posting, and no board vote.

HB 1063 does not create new authority over this process. It ensures that existing authority is exercised on the record, in public, with a vote. 

Third, Faculty senates are already advisory bodies under state law. In practice, though, decades of deference have created an unwritten arrangement where these bodies exercise authority with no legal basis. HB 1063 codifies what the law has always said, these bodies are advisory only, while explicitly protecting freedom of association and academic freedom.

In sum, the South is moving. Louisiana has the opportunity to lead. Louisiana’s students and taxpayers deserve transparency in what is being taught, who is being hired, and assurance that the $1 billion they invest in public higher education is working for Louisiana, not against it.