OhioSB 1136th General Assembly (2025-2026)SenateWALLET

Enact Advance Ohio Higher Education Act

Sponsored By: Jerry C. Cirino (Republican)

Signed by Governor

EducationHigher Education

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Bill Overview

Analyzed Economic Effects

18 provisions identified: 4 benefits, 7 costs, 7 mixed.

Equal treatment for college students and employees

Ohio public colleges must apply equal standards and provide equal opportunity to students, faculty, and staff. They cannot give advantages or disadvantages based on race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. This covers admissions, hiring, promotion, tenure, workplace conditions, and institutional programs and activities. Colleges must also prohibit policies explicitly designed to separate people by these traits in credit-earning classrooms, formal orientations, and graduations.

College students must complete civic coursework

Ohio public colleges must require at least three credits in American civic literacy for bachelor's degrees beginning with spring 2029–2030 graduates. The course covers capitalism and includes a cumulative final exam. Required readings include the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, and Letter from Birmingham Jail. Students must also study at least five Federalist Papers essays and Adam Smith's writings, including The Wealth of Nations. Boards and the chancellor must approve course plans. Presidents or their designees may exempt students with approved College Credit Plus coursework, approved Advanced Placement coursework with an exam score of at least 3, or at least three credits in American history or government. Associate's degree programs are exempt.

Colleges face diversity program and scholarship limits

Ohio public colleges must prohibit specified diversity, equity, and inclusion training, offices, job-description requirements, outside contracts, and new scholarships. Existing scholarship requirements must end where possible; donor-required scholarships may continue, but colleges cannot accept more funds for them. Written requests to the chancellor can seek exceptions for legal, licensing, accreditation, and research-grant requirements; earlier grant agreements receive separate treatment. Boards must adopt the policy and colleges must enforce it within 90 days after the section takes effect. Colleges also cannot provide or require employee training promoting nine listed concepts about racial or sex-based superiority, discrimination, responsibility, blame, or distress. Employees who authorize or engage in prohibited training face discipline; compliant public-safety continuing education remains allowed.

Colleges must close low-completion degree programs

Ohio public colleges must end undergraduate programs averaging fewer than five degrees awarded annually over any three-year period. Years before a program first awards a degree do not count. After an appeal, the chancellor may allow a program to continue with conditions, including limits on state instruction funding. Students in affected programs may need a different degree plan.

Faculty lose bargaining over employment policies

Ohio public colleges with tenured faculty must file tenure and retrenchment policies with the chancellor and update them every five years. Retrenchment means program cuts or faculty separations tied to enrollment, funding, mission changes, or financial emergencies. For agreements entered on or after the bargaining section takes effect, covered workload, evaluation, tenure, and retrenchment rules cannot be bargained and override conflicting contract terms. A narrow exception allows retrenchment bargaining in new or renewed contracts where the college's contract already contained such terms when the exception section took effect. That exception covers only faculty with 30 to 35 years in a state retirement system when retrenchment is determined.

Full-time public college faculty cannot strike

Full-time faculty at Ohio public colleges cannot strike under the state's public-employee bargaining rules. Their disputes instead use the final-offer settlement process. Public employers may seek a court order stopping strikes by employees barred from striking, including covered faculty. Employers can file in the county common pleas court where the strike occurs.

Campus viewpoint protections and speech limits

Ohio public colleges must promote intellectual diversity and let students reach their own conclusions without indoctrination. This requirement covers course approvals, evaluations, general education, department goals, and learning outcomes. Colleges cannot use political tests in admissions, hiring, or promotion, or direct political expression in work or study. Colleges also cannot endorse or oppose controversial beliefs, with exceptions for funding, their knowledge mission, and a specified congressional armed-hostility circumstance. Exceptions also protect listed holiday recognition, support for constitutions and laws, and U.S. or Ohio flags; professional academic judgment remains protected unless misused to violate these rules. Boards must adopt and colleges must enforce the diversity and neutrality policies within 90 days after the section takes effect. Colleges must also post a commitment to free inquiry, speech, assembly, civil inquiry, and equal opportunity, including in admissions and faculty hiring materials.

Faculty face annual reviews with appeals

Ohio public colleges must annually evaluate every full-time faculty member they directly pay, using objective, measurable standards and an appeals process. Reviews must assess each listed work area taking at least 5% of the faculty member's time during the previous year. Student evaluations must count for at least 25% of the teaching component; reviews also set approved work-effort plans for the next year. Colleges must use the chancellor's standard student questions, including whether classrooms are free from political, racial, gender, and religious bias. Colleges must establish peer reviews focused on teaching development and submit annual-review policies to the chancellor, updating them every five years.

Faculty workload rules include dismissal safeguards

The chancellor and Ohio public colleges must develop faculty workload standards reflecting each college's mission and emphasizing undergraduate learning. Boards must adopt and publish minimum full-time workloads, teaching-credit expectations, equivalents for other duties, and consequences for noncompliance. Dismissal requires a dean's, provost's, or equivalent official's recommendation, the president's agreement, and board approval. Colleges must submit policies to the chancellor and update them at least every five years.

More tenure paths tied to research funding

Ohio public college boards must update tenure policies to promote excellence in teaching, research, service, commercialization, or a combination. Colleges must offer multiple tenure paths to receive research money from the Research Incentive Third Frontier Fund or Third Frontier-Tax funding lines. A path based on turning research into commercial products is allowed, but not required.

Tenured faculty face reviews with protections

Ohio public colleges must review tenured faculty receiving the same below-expectations category rating in at least two of three consecutive years. Faculty keeping tenure after review face another review after any below-expectations rating during the next two years. A documented, sustained record of significant underperformance outside annual evaluations can trigger immediate review for cause. Reviews can lead to censure, remedial training, or termination for cause, but protected academic expression cannot establish cause. Policies must include appeals, be submitted to the chancellor, and be updated every five years. The due-process period is capped at six months, with one presidential extension of up to two months.

Students and faculty get complaint responses

Ohio public colleges must respond to complaints about violations of intellectual-diversity policies or interference with those rights. They must also respond when students, student groups, or faculty allege employee violations of the covered requirements and bans. Colleges must use the designated complaint process and explain intellectual-diversity protections to students and employees, including during onboarding. They must report violations and discipline under the chancellor's guidelines.

Students get public college course syllabi

Beginning in 2026–2027, Ohio public colleges must post undergraduate course syllabi by the first day of classes. Course information includes instructor qualifications, contact details, and schedules. It must be searchable, available without registration, and reachable within three links from the college's main page. Syllabi must remain posted for at least two years, or available on request when no longer used. Community colleges may post general syllabi; College Credit Plus courses taught at secondary schools by high-school teachers are exempt.

Colleges broaden speakers and disclose payments

Ohio public colleges must adopt policies to seek invited speakers with differing political or ideological views. Boards must adopt the policies and colleges must enforce them within 90 days after the section takes effect. Colleges must publicly list speaker fees, honoraria, and other compensation exceeding $500 for college-sponsored events. The complete list must be searchable, require no registration, and be reachable within three links from the main webpage.

Ohio State limits trustee powers and jobs

Ohio State student trustees cannot vote, count toward a quorum, or attend closed executive sessions. The board can no longer grant them voting rights. Ohio State trustees and their relatives by blood or marriage cannot hold university jobs paid from state or university funds. This includes professorships and removes the prior student-trustee exception.

Noncompliant colleges risk state funding cuts

Ohio lawmakers may withhold or reduce funding after finding that a public college violated the section's requirements. This includes state operating subsidies, capital improvement money, and other state appropriations. The law requires no particular cut and sets no dollar amount.

Colleges face China funding and security rules

Ohio public colleges cannot accept gifts from China's government or groups reasonably suspected of acting for it. Exceptions cover specified payments from Chinese citizens, alumni gifts, and philanthropic or unrestricted grants backed by required safeguards. Colleges must report new or renewed partnerships with academic or research institutions in China and maintain intellectual-property and security safeguards. Safeguards include federal-law compliance, annual faculty conflict programs, formal foreign-visitor procedures, and uniform visiting-scholar agreements. Colleges must send applicable federal education reports to the chancellor, who shares reported information with lawmakers on request. The state auditor checks partnership safeguards during regular audits.

University trustees get shorter terms and training

Nonstudent trustees appointed on or after July 1, 2025, serve six years rather than nine at the covered universities. These are Ohio State, Ohio, Miami, Bowling Green State, Kent State, Central State, Cleveland State, Northeast Ohio Medical, Wright State, Youngstown State, Akron, Cincinnati, Shawnee State, and Toledo. Earlier appointees keep their prior terms, and student trustee terms do not change. The law removes the four-year reappointment wait after a full nine-year term or more than six years of one, including related Toledo restrictions. The chancellor must provide annual trustee education; new trustees must attend within their first two years, and continuing trustees must meet chancellor-set training levels. Training covers board duties, finances, reserves, capital planning, fundraising, legal compliance, and student welfare.

Sponsors & Cosponsors

Sponsor

Jerry C. Cirino
Republican • Senate

Cosponsors

Adam C. Bird
Republican • House
Adam Mathews
Republican • House
Al Cutrona
Republican • Senate
Andrew O. Brenner
Republican • Senate
Angela N. King
Republican • House
Bernard Willis
Republican • House
Beth Lear
Republican • House
Bill Reineke
Republican • Senate
Brian Lorenz
Republican • House
Brian M. Chavez
Republican • Senate
Brian Stewart
Republican • House
David Thomas
Republican • House
Don Jones
Republican • House
Gary Click
Republican • House
George F. Lang
Republican • Senate
Heidi Workman
Republican • House
Jane M. Timken
Republican • Senate
Jennifer Gross
Republican • House
Johnathan Newman
Republican • House
Josh Williams
Republican • House
Kevin Ritter
Republican • House
Kristina D. Roegner
Republican • Senate
Kyle Koehler
Republican • Senate
Levi Dean
Republican • House
Marilyn John
Republican • House
Mark Hiner
Republican • House
Mark Romanchuk
Republican • Senate
Melanie Miller
Republican • House
Meredith Craig
Republican • House
Michael D. Dovilla
Republican • House
Monica Robb Blasdel
Republican • House
Phil Plummer
Republican • House
Riordan T. McClain
Republican • House
Rodney Creech
Republican • House
Sandra O'Brien
Republican • Senate
Sarah Fowler Arthur
Republican • House
Shane Wilkin
Republican • Senate
Stephen A. Huffman
Republican • Senate
Steve Demetriou
Republican • House
Susan Manchester
Republican • Senate
Terry Johnson
Republican • Senate
Tex Fischer
Republican • House
Thomas Hall
Republican • House
Tim Barhorst
Republican • House
Tim Schaffer
Republican • Senate
Tom Young
Republican • House
Ty D. Mathews
Republican • House

Roll Call Votes

All Roll Calls

Yes: 114 • No: 62

Senate vote • 3/26/2025

Concurred in House amendments

Yes: 20 • No: 11

House vote • 3/19/2025

Passed

Yes: 59 • No: 34