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Saving Florida's Higher Education

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 13, 2007

Updated: 09/12/2007 06:55 pm

Thanks for reporting the serious problems facing our state universities, their students and Florida's economy ('U.S. News' Latest Reports Shows State's Universities Are Slipping,' Our Opinion, Aug. 25). In a nutshell, our state universities are overcrowded (Florida has five of the nations 15 largest universities), increasingly under-funded, and as you have noted, slipping in the quality of the education provided to their students who are increasingly packed into excessively large classes with graduate assistants and part-time instructors replacing more qualified professors, a shortage of academic advisers and increased time required for graduation. All of this casts a long shadow on the quality of the education that we provide our students, the economic future of our state, and is deeply disappointing to all of us who have worked over the years to provide our state and its students with a superior state university system and a stronger state economy.

Now we are challenged to confront this new crisis in higher education and reverse its downward spiral by taking the following five steps.

First, affirm the Board of Governor's constitutional power to establish tuition and fees at our state universities. The people of Florida granted this power to an independent, non-partisan Board of Governors in 2002 by overwhelming support of a constitutional amendment to provide the newly created board the power to govern and control our state university system. The Supreme Court of Florida, in a case now pending before it, should resolve any doubt about the board's constitutional power to establish tuition and fees in our universities as in other states with strong and distinguished state universities. Otherwise, university tuition, which should cover up to a third of the cost of a student's higher education, will continue to be the lowest in the nation at our flagship universities, according to USA Today.

Second, our state should provide more adequate funding for our state universities. The distinction of having the lowest tuition in the country would be fine if Florida provided adequate tax support for our universities. On that score, however, our Florida per capita tax support for higher education is, according to State Ranking 2007, the lowest in the country and less than half that of North Carolina. Thus, the nations' lowest tuition together with the nation's lowest per capita tax support results in the least adequate state university funding in the country. And to make matters worse, our universities now face a 4 percent to 10 percent cut in their current budgets.

Third, Bright Futures, our state's lottery-funded merit scholarship program, needs fixing to do what it was intended to do without its negative effect on university funding. As you have noted, Florida high school students who graduate with at least a 3.5 GPA and a 1270 SAT or a 28 ACT score receive a scholarship to cover the cost of tuition in our state universities. Also, students who graduate with 3.0 GPA or better and have at least a 970 SAT or a 20 ACT score are entitled to a Medallion Scholarship Award for 75 percent of state university tuition at our Florida higher education institutions. Unfortunately, the cost of the program, especially its second tier (the Medallion Scholarship Award), has multiplied from the $75 million dollars it started with 10 years ago to more than $300 million dollars last year with huge increases projected for the future. Consequently, much of the tax revenue needed to fund our universities is being diverted to cover the cost of Bright Futures Scholarships and tuition is being kept low to minimize future scholarships costs.

Our state can certainly afford the first tier of the Bright Futures scholarship program to encourage top students to attend our state universities, but the requirements for the second tier should be significantly increased to not only require a 3.0 GPA but also at least a 1020 SAT score which is about the national average (1021 for verbal and math). Also, the second tier should become 'need' based so necessary tuition increases won't jeopardize our Bright Futures Scholarship Program.

Floridians should demand that we do a better job for the almost 300,000 students looking to our state universities to equip them with the skills and knowledge to compete in the increasingly competitive global economy.

T. Terrell Sessums is the former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.

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