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Florida Doesn't Need Sprawling Systems

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 25, 2008

The Board of Governors recently approved a 20-year initiative (Forward by Design) to foster enhanced quality, expand bachelor's degree production and increase graduate and professional degrees important to Florida's future.

This initiative also underscores the importance of national competitiveness for our 10 comprehensive institutions and proposes a new set of baccalaureate institutions to meet the growing demand for higher education in the state.

As you expressed in your editorial of Jan. 11, ("USF Can't Achieve Greatness if Branch Campuses Run Amok") we, too, have serious concerns about the future of multi-campus universities. We should avoid a series of mega-universities with outposts scattered throughout the state that compete with each other based more on size and political power than on quality.

Take California, for example. It has nine universities in the U.S. News top 50 while Florida has only one, the University of Florida. On the other hand, the California State System has 450,000 students in 23 institutions dedicated to undergraduate and master's-level education. In Florida, only New College - our 11th institution, with 700 students - focuses exclusively on undergraduate education.

We can't achieve quality at our 10 comprehensive universities without focus. The last thing we need is each major university competing to build a system that overlaps with others and wastes scarce resources.

Communities like St. Petersburg and others served by USF may well deserve their own four-year institutions. If so, these institutions should stand alone and not deflect USF's attention and resources.

It is time to take politics out of our State University System and put quality in.

John Dasburg is chair of the Academic Programs/Strategic Planning Committee of the Board of Governors of the State University System of Florida.

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