If I had a college age kid, I definitely would encourage them to avoid some of the southern schools caught up in the MAGA cultural revolution. There's been a big movement to crush free speech and academic freedom, especially in the Texas university system.
A big recent example is Texas A&M booting any professor who doesn't fall into the party line - most recently punishing a professor for teaching Plato in an intro philosophy course. [0]
[0] https://lithub.com/texas-am-is-banning-plato-citing-his-gend...