A sign for Auburn University seen on March 28, 2026 in Auburn, Alabama. Behind the sign is William J. Samford Hall. (Anna Barrett/Alabama Reflector)
Effective October 1, HB580 expanded the authority of Boards of Trustees over curriculum and degree requirements at public universities, reinforcing their role as the ultimate academic decision-makers. At first glance, that may sound like a dry governance issue. It’s not.
Shortly after HB580 took effect, Auburn’s Board of Trustees not only embraced this authority but exercised it. In its new curriculum policy, the Board declares that “no external standard, professional norm, or process can limit the Board’s authority over curriculum.” Students, parents, alumni, and donors should consider these implications. The hubris is astonishing.
Auburn’s trustees are asserting that their authority supersedes not only faculty expertise, but professional norms, disciplinary standards, and even accrediting bodies. That has nothing to do with educational quality or student success. It’s a declaration of raw power.
Imagine the Board deciding that future engineers need a different mix of courses to design and build bridges, so they revise the Civil Engineering curriculum accordingly. And why not? They have the authority.
We know why that would be a terrible idea. Civil engineering faculty, industry experts, and ABET’s Engineering Accreditation Commission determine what future engineers need to know. The program would lose its accreditation, and students would pay the price. Employers and licensing boards care about accredited programs, not trustee-designed curricula.
One would think Auburn’s trustees would know better than to substitute their judgment for that of experts. But that is exactly what they have done. The Board recently intervened in Auburn’s core curriculum by requiring every undergraduate student to complete both a U.S. history and civics course. Reasonable people can disagree whether that’s a good idea, but the concern is how this unfolded.
Several years ago, Auburn’s history faculty examined this same question from the Board. They considered that U.S. history and civics are already Alabama high school requirements, and students must demonstrate civics knowledge before graduation. After working with the administration to directly assess incoming students’ knowledge, the results showed that students already possessed the knowledge that the proposed requirement was intended to address. Based on both the evidence and faculty expertise, the administration concluded that a change to the core curriculum was not warranted.
Now, all of a sudden, it is. Yet trustees offered no evidence that the previous analysis was wrong. They presented no assessment identifying a deficiency and no rationale for overturning the earlier decision. They simply exercised the Board’s authority. This is how raw power operates. It does not need to persuade, justify, or demonstrate expertise. It simply imposes its will.
Faced with the Board’s directive, Auburn’s history faculty proposed expanding students’ exposure to American history and creating more opportunities for meaningful engagement. Auburn’s Dean Council made the final decision and rejected the faculty’s preferred recommendation. Now every Auburn student will spend time and tuition dollars repeating material they already mastered in high school.
Auburn chose not to follow the recommendation of the people who teach and study history. Instead, it followed the judgment of trustees and administrators with no expertise in the field. Imagine asking them to determine what nursing students must learn to provide patient care or what accounting students must learn to pass the CPA exam. The absurdity is obvious.
This should concern anyone who believes academic decisions should be guided by expertise rather than centralized authority. Universities exist precisely because specialized knowledge matters. The further decisions move from those with the expertise, the more educational quality suffers, and the more students bear the consequences.
The Board has a critical and legitimate role. Trustees decide which programs exist. They allocate resources, approve budgets, and provide oversight. Good leadership is not about exercising every power the Board possesses. It’s about knowing when not to. That is the lesson Auburn’s trustees seem to have forgotten.
It is also a lesson Alabama’s lawmakers should keep in mind. By passing HB580, lawmakers embraced the idea that concentrating authority at the top leads to better decisions. That is a surprising position in a red state where politicians routinely warn about the dangers of centralized power. Conservatives distrust decisions made by distant bureaucracies. History offers ample support for that belief.
Auburn’s Board actions should serve as an early warning about what happens when expertise becomes subordinate to power. If we would never want trustees to meddle in a curriculum that teaches students to design and build bridges, why are we comfortable allowing them to meddle in any curriculum at all?
From Alabama Reflector Post Url: Visit
Author: Beth Davis Sramek