Iowa policymakers have an opportunity to deepen and make more effective their commitment to higher education reform. House Bill 2361 passed the Iowa House last month; its equivalent, Senate Bill 2232, awaits consideration by the Senate. Iowa would benefit greatly if SF 2232 passed the Senate and could be presented to Gov. Kim Reynolds.
HF 2361, and now SF 2232, offer measured increases to previous higher education reforms. The bills focus on five tailored reforms:
Iowa’s public universities would incorporate 1 survey course in American history and 1 survey course in American government into their general education requirements (GER). This requirement would replace an existing requirement that Iowa’s public universities incorporate 1 course in both American history and civil government into their GERs.Iowa’s three civic centers—the University of Iowa’s Center for Intellectual Freedom, Iowa State University’s Center for Cyclone Civics, and the University of Northern Iowa’s Center for Civic Education—would offer courses every year to fulfill these GER requirements.Iowa’s Board of Regents would conduct annual reviews of all public university GERs.The Center for Cyclone Civics and the Center for Civic Education would join the Center for Intellectual Freedom in providing annual reports to Iowa state policymakers on their achievements and the obstacles they face.The Center for Cyclone Civics, the Center for Civic Education, and the Center for Intellectual Freedom each would establish an ongoing lecture and debate series to promote civil dialogue and debate on issues important to the American republic.
All these reforms are good and necessary. Iowa college students, as American college students generally, know too little about their nation’s history and form of government. Too many of them, alas, querulously vilify both of these because they never have learned what their country and their republic actually are like. Increasing the number of required courses to 2 discrete courses on American history and American government will allow both to be treated with greater thoughtfulness and thoughtful detail—and this requirement will still only be half of the 4 courses in American and state history and government courses required in Texas.
Much of the rest of SF 2232 ensures that Iowa’s civics center will be centrally involved in offering these required American history and government courses. That helps the universities, by making sure that one of their components is dedicated to offering these GERS, and it helps the civics centers, by giving them a central and state-mandated function. SF 2232 also enhances university accountability to policymakers by having the Board of Regents annually review GERs and by having the civic centers report on whether they’re operating well—a reform that is necessary because elements of the university establishment have been reluctant to comply with policymaker reform preferences for the civic centers. The lecture and debate series will help free Iowa’s public universities from the radical political monoculture in higher education, which stifles far too much public discussion that does not align with progressive ideology.
SF 2232 offers good and necessary reforms. American higher education has become bureaucratic, and politicized, and Iowa (alas) is no exception to the rule. Iowans need to have their policymakers enact these reforms, because the higher education establishment has become too hidebound to reform itself. But these reforms are not a revolution. They are measured, practicable—and follow the precedent of higher education reform in other states. Increasing the American history and government to 2 GERs will have Iowa do half as much as what Texas has done for generations. The lecture and debate provision echoes Florida HB 931 (2023)—whose public universities have put a similar provision into effect without fuss. Getting regular reports from civics center echoes the practices of Arizona and Ohio. Iowa will be adopting the best existing practices in America’s public universities if it adopts these measures, not adopting untested and radical reforms.
Iowa’s House rightly recognized that Iowa higher education needed reform—and passed a thoughtful, well-tailored bill to achieve that aim. Iowa’s Senate should follow suit. SF 2332 is precisely the sort of reform that should emerge from America’s laboratories of democracy—good and moderate reform.
