Higher ed bills aim to reshape regents, bar land acknowledgments, strip DEI from classroom

DES MOINES — Among nearly two dozen higher education-related study bills dropped in week one of the new legislative session is one looking to reshape the Board of Regents — which for more than a century has governed Iowa’s three public universities.

Proposed board changes include shortening the regent term from six years to four; removing the student regent’s voting power; and adding non-voting student representatives from each campus along with non-voting lawmakers from the House and Senate.

The speaker of the Iowa House would appoint two representatives to serve as non-voting regents, and the Senate majority leader would appoint two senators to be non-voting regents.

The proposed bill clarifies that no more than five of the Board of Regents’ nine “voting” members can be of the same political party — leaving the political persuasion of non-voting members undefined.

And the bill includes a line automatically repealing on Dec. 31, 2029, the clause that adds two non-voting senators and two non-voting representatives — while adding a new permanent clause giving the Iowa Legislature direct power to reverse approved regent spending.

“The General Assembly, by passage of a joint resolution requiring approval of the governor, may disapprove any individual, ongoing expenditure by the state Board of Regents or an institution of higher education under the governance thereof,” according to the clause. “The board or institution shall terminate the expenditure upon the effective date of the resolution.”

In addition to the “University Governance Reform Act,” lawmakers this week also dropped bills directing the board to sign President Donald Trump’s proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education; prohibiting Iowa’s public universities from hiring Chinese citizens on H-1B work visas; barring the campuses and departments from issuing “land acknowledgments”; and prohibiting any general education courses from including DEI or critical race theory content.

“No later than Dec. 31, 2026, the Board of Regents shall conduct a review of all undergraduate general education requirements and core curricula at institutions of higher education governed by the board and direct the institutions to remove any required courses or course requirements that include diversity, equity, inclusion, and critical race theory-related content,” according to House Study Bill 542.

Republican lawmakers heading into the session flagged concerns with what’s being taught across Iowa’s public universities — also advancing this week a measure requiring new American history and American government general education courses.

“These institutions don’t belong to the faculty. They don't belong to the administrators. They belong to the people of Iowa. They are state universities, we chartered them, and we appropriate over half a billion dollars to them,” Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, and chair of the House Higher Education Committee, said earlier this month. “And so I don't think it's legislative overreach — I don't think it's asking too much, either — to require just one course in American government (or) one course in American history.”

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Reshaping the Board of Regents

The bill aiming to reform the Board of Regents adds a handful of new functions to its mission, including:

“The policy must specify that a faculty senate or council at an institution serves only in an advisory capacity with no final decision-making authority on any matter,” according to the bill, which also requires regents to add a new athletics committee to those it already has — like its property and facilities and academic affairs committees.

No H-1B visas from China

On the heels of a presidential proclamation in September requiring employers to pay $100,000 per H-1B visa in an effort to “strengthen the integrity of the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program,” lawmakers are proposing a China-specific restriction for Iowa’s public universities.

House Study Bill 536 would prohibit the campuses from hiring H-1B visa holders who are Chinese citizens beginning July 1, 2026.

H-1B visas allow employers to hire workers in “specialty occupations,” and the United States annually limits the number of those visas issued to 65,000 — plus another 20,000 for advanced degree holders.

A database using U.S. Department of Labor disclosures shows the University of Iowa in 2025 had 319 H-1B certified labor condition applications — a mandatory step for a H-1B visa. Iowa State had 108 certified applications last year, and University of Northern Iowa had 16, according to the database.

No land acknowledgments

All three of Iowa’s public universities have on their websites some form of “land acknowledgment statement” recognizing the tribal nations and Indigenous people on the land first and committing to honor them.

“As an academic institution, it is our responsibility to acknowledge the sovereignty and the traditional territories of these tribal nations, and the treaties that were used to remove these tribal nations, and the histories of dispossession that have allowed for the growth of this institution since 1847,” according to the University of Iowa’s “acknowledgment of land and sovereignty” statement. “Consistent with the university's commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, understanding the historical and current experiences of native peoples will help inform the work we do.”

But House Study Bill 535 would prohibit land acknowledgments by Iowa’s public universities or any university department.

Sign the compact

Although no colleges or universities to date have signed President Donald Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” originally sent to nine institutions in October and then offered up to anyone, House Study Bill 548 would charge Iowa’s public universities to sign on by the end of 2026.

The compact offers preferential treatment and federal funding to any universities that sign on to a range of administrative priorities — like banning the consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, freezing tuition, promising not to recognize transgender women, and shutting down departments that “punish, belittle” or “spark violence against conservative ideas.”

Most invited institutions have rejected the proposal — like Brown University, Dartmouth College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — while others have provided feedback, like Arizona State and Vanderbilt universities.

Revived bills

Re-upping measures proposed last year without success, lawmakers want to pass bills requiring Iowa’s universities to freeze tuition for incoming freshmen for four years and ban DEI and critical race theory content from general education courses.

Such content includes anything that relates to “critical theory, whiteness, systemic racism, institutional racism, anti-racism, microaggressions, systemic bias, implicit bias, unconscious bias, intersectionality, gender identity, social justice, cultural competence, allyship, race-based reparations, race-based privilege, race-based or gender-based diversity, race-based or gender-based equity, or race-based or gender-based inclusion.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com