The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (Coordinating Board) adopts repeal of Title 19, Part 1, Chapter 5, Subchapter C, §5.51, Publishing of Doctoral Program Data, without changes to the proposed text as published in the August 20, 2021, issue of the Texas Register (46 TexReg 5136). The rule will not be republished.

Specifically, this adopted repeal removes the requirement that public four-year institutions publish data annually regarding the performance of their doctoral programs, thereby reducing their reporting burden. The Coordinating Board regularly reviews statutory language to repeal any unnecessary or duplicative data reporting. The adopted repeal reduces duplicative institutional reporting.

The following comments were received regarding the adoption of the repeal.

Two comments from University of Houston:

I write to share my support of the repeal of rules for posting doctoral data (Texas Administrative Code, Title 19, Part 1, Chapter 5, Subchapter C, §5.51). Repealing this rule will save much time that is spent by numerous people across our campus to put this data together. Not only does my office have to spend time with a number of the items, the graduate schools works with people in all our colleges to gather pieces that are not easily obtained in either our HR or student information system. It really takes a couple of months to put together once everything is done. And the effort to work on this is on top of everyone's regular work activity. We have much information about our students at the doctoral level already published on our website if individuals wanted to learn about them. I strongly support repealing this rule.

I wanted to record my comments in support of repealing the reporting tied to the 18 Characteristics of PhD programs. In my position, I help put together this data for one of the colleges, around 10 individual programs, for the University of Houston. I find it to be very tedious to put this data together each year. While there are certain data points from that report that we regularly tabulate, use in strategic planning, and make available to the public, putting together some of the other data points to be very time consuming and hard to keep uniform across disciplines. I would absolutely do the work if I thought potential students were using this data, but despite our efforts to post the information in highly-visible areas, I truly believe that students rarely look for this kind of data. Even if they stumble onto the data, I just don't think it factors into their decision to choose/ not choose our programs. They're much more likely to be using the opinions of mentors, peers, and the important people in their lives over these reports. Please allow us to skip this report. It just doesn't have the value for which it was originally intended and has become a groan-worthy part of each year's cycle of reports. Thank you for your time.

Comment from The University of Texas System:

I write to express my support to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for repealing Texas Administrative Code, Title 19, Part 1, Chapter 5, Subchapter C, §5.51, regarding the publishing of doctoral program data.

Comment from The University of Texas at Tyler:

I am writing to express my support of the proposed repeal of rules for publishing doctoral program data (Texas Administrative Code, Title 19, Part 1, Chapter 5, Subchapter C, §5.51). Even for our institution, which currently has relatively few doctoral programs, this requirement has been an undue burden. This reporting typically requires more than 40 hours each year across several departments. Repeal of this requirement will allow us to better use this time to serve our students.

Comment from University of North Texas:

I am writing to support the removal of the above named reporting requirement. The amount of staff time dedicated to this reporting requirement could and should instead be focused on supporting student success and institutional outcomes that align with the 60x30xTX plan. This reporting effort does not appear to be utilized broadly and given the wide range of data now available in the market place this is a duplicative reporting effort. I would encourage the removal of this expectation so that our institutional data practitioners can prioritize more pressing projects with a direct outcome on Texas residents.

Comment from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston:

I am in agreement with the proposal to repeal the requirement for doctoral programs to publish program data on their website. Specifically, doctoral programs are all very unique, not least because doctoral programs tend to be very individualized once the required courses are completed. Without standardized comparison data, it is difficult to know how to interpret the data.

Comment from The University of Texas at El Paso:

Thank you for considering the elimination of the annual publication of doctoral program data to assess a doctoral program's performance. These data are already available in multiple formats and locations on the THECB website (e.g., THECB Accountability) and on most institutional websites. Repeal of this requirement will reduce duplicative institutional reporting at both the State and federal levels (NCES).

Coordinating Board staff concur with these comments in favor of the repeal.

The repeal is adopted under Texas Education Code, Section 61.0512, which provides the Coordinating Board with the authority to review and approve degree programs at public institutions of higher education.