Both College Bowl Competitors Spent Millions On Six-Figure Salaries For DEI Bureaucrats

The University of Texas (UT) and The Ohio State University (OSU) have both funneled millions of dollars into diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, a recent report revealed.

The two universities are set to face off in the Cotton Bowl game Friday, the game that will determine which team moves on to the NCAA Championships on Jan. 20. While the schools each boast lofty football programs, both taxpayer-funded institutions are guilty of spending millions of dollars on the salaries of DEI bureaucrats and accepting millions in foreign funds from the likes of China and Saudi Arabia, an OpenTheBooks investigation revealed.

UT’s 2023 payroll listed 93 people working in the school’s DEI office, the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DDCE), and another 23 people in other DEI roles, according to OpenTheBooks. Their combined salaries costed the school nearly $9.8 million in pay, the equivalent of more than 1,800 students’ tuition.

In light of a Texas law passed in 2023 banning DEI in higher education, UT rebranded its office to the Division of Campus and Community Engagement and fired nearly 60 employees in DEI roles the following year, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

The university’s highest paid DEI official in 2023 made $439,320, and another 28 employees earned more than $100,000, OpenTheBooks found. Over $381,000 went toward DEI initiatives in 2023, such as staff diversity training and unspecified payments to organizations like the Equal Justice Center, which provides free legal services to illegal immigrants, the Austin Justice Coalition, which “serves people who are historically and systematically impacted by gentrification, segregation, over policing, a lack of educational and employment opportunities, and other institutional forms of racism in Austin” as well as the Transgender Equity Consulting Inc.

UT brought in billions of taxpayer dollars since 2020 to study DEI topics, such as receiving a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services to study “cisheteronormativity, the societal belief that everyone is cisgender and heterosexual,” the OpenTheBooks report said. The school also accepted $380.5 million in foreign funds since 2013, including $25.3 million from China and $19.7 million from Saudi Arabia.

OSU outspent UT on DEI salaries, paying 201 staff a total of $13.3 million, a December report from OpenTheBooks revealed. UT outpaced OSU in its collection of foreign funding, however, with OSU accepting a measly $15.8 million from China and $7.7 million from Saudi Arabian sources.

Of the federal grants given to OSU, one went towards funding a program that provides “16-18-year-old girls and nonbinary individuals with immersive, hands-on experiences in the geosciences, combined with elements of artistic expression and technical rock climbing in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado,” OpenTheBooks’ report found. Another program, given $717K from the the Department of Agriculture, tackles “cultural resistance in the USA and Europe [that] impedes the acceptance of insect proteins as food sources.”

These DEI programs are being dismantled at several universities, often in response to state laws like that of Texas’. Many companies and schools began to retreat from the practices following reports such as one analyzing the University of Michigan’s inclusion program which found its DEI office failed to increase diversity in the school’s student body and inadvertently intensified racial relations on campus.

UT and OSU did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.