Texas Higher Education Board Begins Groundwork for Its Next Sunset Review in Waco

The nine people who set policy for Texas’s public colleges spend Sept. 29 in Waco at a retreat where they are barred from deciding anything — and one of the items on the agenda is a Sunset review that will not reach lawmakers until 2029.

Sunset is the periodic audit that decides whether a Texas agency survives. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board is not among the 16 bodies now under review for the session that opens in January; its turn comes in the 2028-29 cycle, and state law abolishes the agency on Sept. 1, 2029 unless the Legislature renews it. Opening the file more than two years ahead of that cycle is early, and the agenda treats it as routine planning for the coming fiscal year rather than anything urgent.

The board has reason to take it seriously anyway. Its last Sunset review, in 2012-13, narrowed the agency to powers the Legislature had expressly granted, stripped its say over campus construction projects and barred it from ordering universities to consolidate or drop degree programs. Whatever the next review does will land on an agency that has picked up assignments since.

Two of those are live right now. The governor directed the board in August to build a statewide framework for three-year bachelor’s degrees and named a 13-member working group this month; recommendations are due to his office by Dec. 31. And a 2025 law put an ombudsman with subpoena power over universities inside the agency and ordered governing boards to review their core curriculums. Recommendations from a 14-member committee are expected at the board’s October meeting, with a report to lawmakers due Dec. 1.

The other agenda item is the strategic plan. The state’s higher education goals still run under Building a Talent Strong Texas, adopted in 2022 and pointed at 2030; the agency’s own five-year operating plan, adopted separately, began this fiscal year. The retreat is the kind of session where a board decides what it wants before it has to vote on it. Nothing settled there binds anyone — the notice says as much outright. The next regular quarterly meeting, in Austin on Oct. 21, is where the core curriculum recommendations are expected to surface.

Meeting at a glance

Board members

• Stacy A. Hock — chair; Austin; investor and philanthropist; term to 2027.
• Welcome W. Wilson Jr. — vice chair; Houston; real estate executive; term to 2029.
• S. Javaid Anwar — secretary of the board; Midland; term to 2027.
• Richard L. Clemmer — Austin; term to 2029.
• Brian J. Haley — Austin; investment firm co-founder; term to 2027.
• Darryl Heath — Colleyville; retired consulting executive; term to 2031.
• Colt McCoy — Aledo; real estate; former University of Texas quarterback; term to 2031.
• Juan J. Nevarez — Dallas; energy company executive; term to 2029.
• Ashlie A. Thomas — Victoria; fuel and retail company executive; term to 2031.
• Eli Heath — student representative, non-voting; Lubbock; Texas Tech undergraduate.

Roster from the board’s July 2026 quarterly agenda book, the most recent authoritative list, and cross-checked against the governor’s appointment releases of October 2025, January 2026, May 2026 and June 2026. The agency’s own website still shows a vacant tenth tile and calls this a 10-member board; the statute sets nine voting members and the July agenda lists nine, so the website was not used. Wynn Rosser has been commissioner of higher education since November 2024. Board liaison: BJ Bishop, 512-427-6104.