We have become a national leader. More people inside and outside of our state should know about this.
Universities continue to soul search nationally about why they’re losing public trust. They should listen to their constituents, as national polls clearly describe three reasons: universities have become too expensive; they’re not teaching the skills that prepare graduates for the job market; and they’re too focused on left-wing political activism.
Concern about the left-activism focus passed concern about costs to become the number-one trust issue for U.S. higher education in the past year, following the October 7, 2023 terror attacks.
It may have even been a key factor swinging the Presidential election in former-President Trump’s favor.
The two of us have been working for years to combat universities’ partisan turn, across several institutions.
One of us (Beaulier) spent a decade building centers focused on free enterprise at multiple universities.
The other (Burgess) has been involved in Heterodox Academy (HxA), the Academic Freedom Alliance, and other campus-level initiatives with similar missions, and he won HxA’s first Open Inquiry Award for teaching, in 2020.
Burgess has argued publicly for years that universities and other scientific institutions need to take free expression, viewpoint diversity, and non-partisanship more seriously, to preserve both their excellence and their standing in society.
We are therefore proud to be able to say that the University of Wyoming (UW) has become a national leader in addressing these issues. UW is leading in terms of both policies and culture.
The national gold-standard policies that advocates for campus reform call for are the Chicago Trifecta (named after policies at the University of Chicago): robust free expression and academic freedom policies (the Chicago Principles), institutional political neutrality (the Kalven Report), and strict prohibitions on considering anything other than academic qualifications in hiring, such as politics, race, or gender (the Shils Report).
The University of Wyoming now has all three of these policies. In December 2023, we adopted principles of free expression, intellectual freedom, and constructive dialogue, which include institutional neutrality.
Last May, our Trustees adopted an Equal Opportunity and Prohibited Efforts policy that strictly prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and other immutable characteristics; and also prohibits the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statements or criteria in hiring, merit evaluation, and promotion, which are often used at other schools as political litmus tests or as fig leaves for protected-class discrimination.
These policies put us in rarefied air nationally. Several universities adopted free expression and institutional neutrality policies in the past year, but most did so without extensive faculty and student consultations, and some seem to not be enforcing them (or doing so inconsistently).
In contrast, UW’s policy was backed by a year-long consultation process and a working-group report, and then it was ratified democratically by our student government, faculty and staff senates, Dean’s Council, University Directors, and President’s cabinet.
We can’t think of any other university whose students, faculty, and administrators all voted to affirm free expression and institutional neutrality, as sad as this is to say.
As far as we know, there are also very few universities that have adopted and enforced a robust non-discrimination policy equivalent to Chicago’s Shils report or UW’s equal opportunity policy.
In most of these other cases we know of (e.g., in Texas and Florida), the universities were explicitly forced to do so by targeted state laws. This is somewhat astonishing, if one considers that protected-class discrimination (and political discrimination, at public universities) in hiring is already against federal law.
Yet, such discrimination is widely practiced nationally.
UW’s recent equal opportunity policy also arose partly in response to state-government scrutiny on DEI.
However, our policy was not mandated by law, and it was instead supported by a working-group report that proactively and publicly acknowledged practices that needed to be discontinued.
In contrast, some other universities appear to have gone to lengths to cover up or covertly continue their legally dubious hiring and admission practices.
We also didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater on access and inclusion. UW’s working group identified many important and non-discriminatory policies and practices, aimed at supporting and improving access for students facing individual disadvantages.
These practices and policies are continuing. In other words, we reject the false dichotomy that universities can either support diversity and inclusivity or promote free inquiry and prohibit discrimination. We are pledging to do both.
UW is implementing several programs aimed at building an institutional culture of free expression, constructive dialogue, institutional neutrality, and equal opportunity. These values were emphasized in this fall’s orientations for new students and faculty.
The freshmen were shown this video, which was later sent to the entire campus.
The administration sent out a September statement to the campus, affirming the new policies, and affirming that our core principles are: “academic freedom and freedom of expression … being open and welcoming to all; supporting and treating everyone fairly and respectfully; being politically neutral as an institution; basing hiring and grading exclusively on merit; encouraging inquiry instead of advocacy in the classroom; and considering the needs of all students, faculty and staff.”
Several campus programs are being rolled out this academic year to build understanding and institutional cultures around these principles.
UW’s national leadership doesn’t just stop at free expression, non-partisanship, and constructive dialogue.
We are also one of the most affordable universities in the country, and we are also a leader in responding to the needs of our students and our state in the job market, addressing the other two major trust issues for higher education.
We charge roughly $5,000 per year in tuition to in-state undergraduate students, and roughly $20,000 per year to out-of-state students. Both rates are among the cheapest in the country for a comprehensive university.
Under the Hathaway Scholarship and Cowboy Commitment, in-state students with high test scores and/or high-school GPAs attend nearly for free.
Our curriculum is responsive to industry demand signals, and our most popular undergraduate majors include nursing, mechanical engineering, and accounting, among others with high job placement rates.
We also offer majors in several agricultural disciplines, energy resources, petroleum engineering, and wildlife and fisheries biology and management, which are closely matched to plentiful jobs in our state and others. We have new initiatives in artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and other areas of computing.
In his recent State of the Campus speech, our president (Ed Seidel) announced initiatives aimed at ensuring all undergraduate students have paid internship opportunities, and at building better connections between students and Wyoming employers, so that we can retain more of our graduates in the state’s economy.
As two people who have spent the past decade or more in higher education, and who have been dismayed at higher-ed’s recent and deserved decline in trust, we couldn’t be prouder of how UW is charting a better path forward.
Yet, it also seems to us that relatively few people inside and outside of Wyoming are aware of what UW is doing to address these issues.
So, the next time there is a negative national news cycle about higher education —a bout how it’s too expensive, too detached from the job market, or too beholden to a particular ideology — we encourage our fellow Wyomingites to talk about how UW is actually taking these issues seriously and leading the change.
College graduates still benefit from higher earnings and better health and life satisfaction throughout their lives, on average. If you’re a prospective student—in-state or out-of-state—and you want to realize these benefits without crushing debt, distracting drama, or constraints on what you can study or believe, then you should come join us at the University of Wyoming.
Matt Burgess is Assistant Professor of Economics, and a Presidential Fellow working on free expression and constructive dialogue at the University of Wyoming. Scott Beaulier is Dean of Business at the University of Wyoming.
