At East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, two of four professor positions – in history and criminal justice – remain unfilled after fewer people than usual applied and numerous candidates withdrew their interest. A second-choice candidate was hired in the computer science department after the most qualified said “no” to a job offer.
The hiring trouble at this regional public university stems from Gov. Kevin Stitt’s efforts to limit traditional job protections for faculty, argue other leaders in Oklahoma, who say that’s making it harder for schools in remote locations to attract academic talent.
“The governor, in messages he has delivered to us, says he disagrees with academic freedom and thinks professors at the end of their careers aren’t doing much,” said ECU President Wendell Godwin. “But we have a process for getting rid of professors who are not effective, whether they are tenured or not.”
Following in the footsteps of President Donald Trump’s second-term shakeup of higher education through funding cuts, bans on diversity programs and litigation, Stitt, a Republican nearing the end of his second term, issued his own crackdown on Oklahoma colleges in February.
One executive order forbids publicly funded regional universities and community colleges statewide from granting tenure to new hires, while sparing the state’s flagship research institutions, the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University. Tenure is a form of job protection that professors earn over time, through a peer-review approval process, which shields academics from retaliation for teaching and researching ideas that may be controversial.
The other executive order called for a “better return-on-investment analysis,” as Stitt said universities need to be more accountable to tuition-payers and taxpayers.
University leaders and state lawmakers from rural Oklahoma communities are perplexed to find themselves in the crosshairs of this culture war issue.
“You hear about the ‘woke agenda’ on Fox and CNN news today,” Godwin said. “I recently had a parent ask if we were going to indoctrinate their student. On a woke meter from 1 to 10, we’re probably not even a 1. It’s not really an issue in rural Oklahoma.”
Oklahoma State Senate Bill 1782 would have expanded the tenure ban to all public universities statewide, but after passing the Senate Education Committee in March, it languished.
Similar bills targeting tenure at public colleges have been introduced this year by Republican lawmakers in about a half dozen other states, including Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Texas.
While no state has fully eliminated tenure, Stitt’s executive order is the most wide-ranging assault on it to date, targeting the six Regional University System of Oklahoma schools — which are the higher education anchors for their communities and hubs for most of rural Oklahoma.
State funding allocations inherently favor OU and OSU, the state’s top-tier research universities, which charge significantly higher tuition and leverage out-of-state enrollment to boost revenue, whereas RUSO schools operate under strict affordability mandates.
If the new ban drives away top-notch faculty from already under-resourced regional campuses, Oklahoma could be left with a higher education system of haves and have-nots.
“Oklahoma presents a really interesting case study,” said Deepa Das Acevedo, an assistant professor of law at Emory University and author of the 2025 book called “The War on Tenure.” She said tenure bans affect schools already struggling to recruit faculty, and they signal to potential recruits that, “Your state’s leaders want to keep you insecure and don’t value your institutions enough.”
One national education researcher sees Stitt’s executive order as yet another blow to rural college education.
“It is a continuation, in my view, of the disregard or the permanent, second-class citizen status that regional universities have in their states,” said Cecilia Orphan, associate professor of higher education at the University of Denver and founding co-director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges. “This is a new way of saying these institutions are not real universities and their students are not worthy of a real university education.”
Why tenure matters
It takes professors a six- to seven-year trial period and passage of strict peer review to earn tenure, a practice that has a long history in higher education.
But Stitt’s rule now limits regional and community colleges to hiring faculty only under fixed-term, renewable contracts dependent on performance and “alignment with workforce and Oklahoma economic needs.”
The RUSO Board of Regents had already been pushing university presidents to better align their faculties to currently enrolled students and workforce needs.
In some instances, the creation of brand-new degree programs designed to address cutting-edge industry needs requires hiring entirely new faculty amid a highly competitive landscape.
“You’re going to miss out on the best of the best,” said Regent Amy Anne Ford, who served as the board’s point person on compliance with the governor’s executive order. “When you’re looking at some of these smaller communities, like Alva or Ada, that already have a difficult time recruiting because they’re not major metropolitan areas, then you add this barrier, it makes it that much more difficult.”
Across this regional college system, 51 percent, or 661 of the 1,287 full-time faculty, are tenured, with another 269 on a tenure track, according to the RUSO Board of Regents.
Ford said the RUSO Board of Regents adopted a rule committing to grant tenure to all those already hired on a tenure track to avoid lawsuits.
But the Stitt order is already significantly shifting the terms of employment for new hires.
As of July 24, the six RUSO universities had hired 44 faculty members who would have been on a tenure track if not for Stitt’s executive order, according to data collected by its Board of Regents.
Regional universities have a distinct institutional mission to provide easy access to college degree programs and to drive regional economic development. And affordability is a key priority.
For in-state residents, the cost of college for RUSO students, on average, was $17,557 per year in 2025-26, compared to $27,293 at the state’s two research universities.
And many RUSO students avoid about $7,700 of that cost for on-campus housing and food by living at home while pursuing their degrees.
“Oklahoma has a system of regional publics that it should be very proud of and work very hard to protect, and not hurt or erode,” said Orphan.
Competing without tenure
Higher education in the U.S. has seen a dramatic shift away from tenure over the last 40 years, with 75 percent to 80 percent of all faculty now on contingent, non-tenure-track appointments due to gradual funding reductions and declines in student enrollment.
The notion that tenured faculty can’t be fired is demonstrably untrue.
Acevedo, the national tenure expert who studied 20 years of all publicly available data, found most terminations occur at public institutions, undermining political claims that tenure hampers these institutions’ ability to fire bad actors.
“What tenure is doing, fundamentally, is providing job security for individuals who face high barriers to entry,” Acevedo said. “It takes years of work and expensive degrees to get into this work.”
But the chairman of the RUSO Board of Regents is bullish on the future.
“I don’t think anyone could say what the long-term impacts will be,” Lake Carpenter said. “I think this will take some adjusting, but we have to comply.”
He cited some of the regional college’s most well-known programs — such as pharmacy at Southwestern Oklahoma State and optometry at Northeastern State — that have long attracted top-notch faculty, as reasons why he believes the system can continue to compete.
Homegrown: How Rural Communities Build Their Workforce
Rural America needs workers—but is there enough local education and training to meet the need? Five nonprofit newsrooms in Wisconsin, North Carolina, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Northern California examine how rural higher education and workforce programs try to fill critical shortages of health care workers, teachers and skilled labor. This collaboration from INN’s Rural News Network explores the promises and missed opportunities to create strong rural workforces.
“Just because there is no tenure track, there are other ways to recruit,” said Carpenter. “Here’s an opportunity to show this can be done, to set the example for others to follow.”
‘Perhaps this won’t be permanent’
At East Central University, faculty members are reviewed annually, and tenure-track faculty are up for renewal every three years. Problems with classroom management or inefficiencies are frequently brought to light by East Central students, who review every teacher in every class they take.
Godwin, ECU’s president, said those practices should make the institution a paragon for accountability, not the target of suspicion or state intervention.
“The irony is it’s the tenured faculty who will be the loudest in saying someone is not meeting the standard,” he said. “‘A’ players want to be surrounded by other ‘A’ players.”
At least a couple of ECU’s new hires decided to come to Ada despite the crackdown on tenure, in hopes that the opportunity will be restored, Gibson said.
“We are pretty hopeful that perhaps this won’t be permanent,” he said.
It’s possible the new rule could sunset along with Stitt’s time in office, which ends in January. State lawmakers are organizing around shared concerns for RUSO campuses in their districts. Some vow to push the next governor to let Stitt’s executive order expire 90 days after he leaves office, which will happen unless his successor opts to continue it.
With nearly 90 percent of RUSO graduates remaining in Oklahoma, to the benefit of local economies, State Rep. Ronny Johns, a Republican representing Ada, said it’s past time for these colleges to get their due.
“You hear all of us say we want our kids and grandkids to be able to stay in the state and work here,” said Johns. “That should motivate all of us — the governor, Senate, House — to do all we can to promote those schools and support those schools.”
This reporting is part of a collaboration with the Institute for Nonprofit News‘ Rural News Network. Five nonprofit newsrooms were involved: Barn Raiser, Carolina Public Press, Mountain State Spotlight, Oklahoma Watch and Shasta Scout. The series was edited by veteran investigative editor Dee J. Hall, co-founder and former managing editor of Wisconsin Watch. Support from Ascendium Education Group made this project possible. This story is a condensed version of the story originally published by Oklahoma Watch.
