Education 'devolves,' and worlds collide

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© St. Petersburg Times
published January 4, 2002

Hey, it's a rare privilege to hang out with the presidents of the University of Florida and Florida State University at the same time. Charles Young and Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte were in town the other day to talk about what needs to happen next, now that Florida's 11 state universities no longer operate under the umbrella of a central Board of Regents.

What brought the top Gator and Seminole together in such agreement? They were on the road to drum up support for "devolution." That's the hot term being used to mean, giving their schools more independence, more local decisionmaking power.

(In case you just arrived here from a state that cares, our Legislature killed the Regents as part of a "reorganization" of education in Florida. What that really means is that any vestige of resistance to political interference has now been removed. A senator with no formal education experience got himself hired as the new state secretary of education. Furthermore, Gov. Jeb Bush personally was able to pick new, local boards of trustees at each university -- 130-plus brand-new patronage rewards. All in all, it was a pretty sweet deal.)

So, what sort of local power do Florida's universities now seek from the Legislature? Setting tuition is the main thing. But there's a lot of other stuff each school would like to control locally, as its own corporate entity. Financial aid decisions. Buying and selling land. Issuing bonds. Fiscal controls. Some stuff that even community colleges can do, but universities can't.

I have to confess, this message from Gainesville and Tallahassee would have sounded even more sweet and reasonable, had not their counterpart in Miami -- the president of Florida International University -- just gotten an astounding pay raise from his own new local board, from $202,000 to $285,000 a year.

Two hundred and eighty-five grand! I was too polite to ask Young and D'Alemberte how it feels now to be second fiddles. Does this mean that FIU is the most important school? Will this set off a bidding war among Florida's universities? (Heaven help us if George Steinbrenner gets on one of these boards, in the absence of a salary cap.)

The Miami decision sent shock waves back to Tallahassee. The new Board of Education, suddenly faced with the reality that Regent-less schools might actually try to do as they pleased, announced it would study new rules for setting salaries.

"When you see something like that," said state Sen. Don Sullivan, R-Seminole, "it's enough to make you want to take control." (In truth, seeing anything is enough to make the Senate want to take control.)

This brings us back to the gentlemen from Gainesville and Tallahassee, asking for devolution. Young even suggested that if the Legislature fails to act, it might help the political cause of U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, a Democrat who wants to hold a statewide referendum on bringing back the Regents.

Again, too polite to say so, I thought: You guys are in the bed you helped make. When the Legislature destroyed the Regents, no university president defended a strong, independent state university system. Each president secretly thought, hmm, maybe MY school will wrangle an advantage out of this, once we are cut loose from the riffraff.

But now they are worried that the Legislature and the new Board of Education might not leave them the power even to tie their own shoelaces. What did they think? Apparently they thought that once they got rid of the party-pooping old Board of Regents, that the Legislature would just toss them the keys to daddy's Porsche and say, have a good time, y'all don't stay out too late, y'hear?

This is Florida's brave new world, in which the Legislature sneaks admission standards directly into the state budget at the behest of lobbyists. Campuses are created and divvied up by the will of senators. Presidents are cowed by the fear of retribution from the Senate, and local boards seem worried foremost about fund-raising.

"Devolution" is the right word, all right.

-- You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.

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