Kate McGee | The Texas Tribune

Southern Methodist University in Dallas tried to declare its independence after the church voted to ban gay weddings and clergy in 2019.

The Board of Regents is lifting the income threshold to expand eligibility across all nine of its UT System campuses.

Professors and instructors say the university is preemptively censoring itself after administrators removed references to race and equity in dozens of College of Education course titles and descriptions.

The governor’s directive extends a tuition freeze for Texas’ public universities that was approved in the last legislative session.

Welsh served as interim president of the flagship university for a little over four months after the prior president resigned in the midst of a hiring scandal that drew national attention.

A&M System Chancellor John Sharp will recommend Welsh, a retired Air Force general, as the sole finalist for the job at a Board of Regents meeting later this week. Welsh has held the position in the interim since July.

“The recent challenges regarding Dr. McElroy have made it clear to me that I must retire immediately,” Banks wrote in her resignation letter. “The negative press is a distraction from the wonderful work being done here.”

No other public universities use race as a factor, but Texas private schools like Rice and Southern Methodist University will be impacted.

The court’s ruling will change admissions practices at the University of Texas at Austin, the state’s only large public university that considers race, and some private universities.

Child support enforcement, environmental regulation, consumer protection and a host of other responsibilities fall under the attorney general’s realm at what is essentially the state’s largest law firm.

The Texas Senate wants to ban tenure. The House gave initial approval Monday to a bill that would instead enshrine tenure policies in state law. After final passage, the two chambers have a week left to come to a compromise.