Texas higher ed leaders optimistic about funding, faculty uneasy about culture wars as new session starts

Students on the Texas State University campus in San Marcos in 2018. Funding and how race is taught in public institutions are likely to dominate the debate around higher education in Texas during this year’s legislative session. (Credit: Laura Skelding for The Texas Tribune)

When the Texas Legislature convened in January 2021 amid a global pandemic, higher education officials came to Austin and braced for budget cuts as the state grappled with how to make sure it could withstand an economic downturn brought by COVID-19.

Two years later, the tone kicking off the 2023 session is very different.