Opinion: Gov. Bush's misplaced pride

Few institutions define a state better than its universities, which is why Gov. Jeb Bush should be careful to express pride in his spending plan for them.

The governor's budget for next year makes sense only in the context of a going-out-of-business sale. He wants to take $148.8-million directly out of the universities' operating expenses, another $20-million or $30-million out of Bright Futures scholarships, and $76-million from construction. This would come on top of a $167.5-million drop this year and a total of $450-million in cuts over the past 12 years. In the past four years, factoring inflation, the amount of state money allocated for each university student has dropped 15 percent.

"I submitted this budget not as a charade," Bush says. "This was a serious effort to deal with the priorities of this state . . . and not raise taxes during uncertain economic times. So I'm proud of the budget."

The university presidents who are risking political repercussion by speaking out against the governor's budget are not nearly so gratified. Nor should they be. What they see is a downward spiral that has lasted more than a decade and that is robbing their students and their universities' stature.

"We are moving backward instead of forward," University of Central Florida president John Hitt told a Senate panel. "The situation is worse than it appears."

Senate President Jim King, to his credit, is listening to those in higher education and has suggested the state will need more money to get the job done. But he says his hands may be tied by a governor and House speaker, Johnnie Byrd, who seem all too eager to embrace more cutbacks. The results would be tragic: faculty layoffs, more assembly hall lectures, elimination of some courses and majors, stricter enrollment caps, scholarship reductions.

The governor wants to blame this on the economy and a voter-approved mandate to lower class sizes in public schools, but this cut is only the most recent and his class-size appropriation for next year is illusory. His budget projects only a 4.65 percent increase in per-student funding for K-12, including the money he labels as "class size reduction," which doesn't even cover inflation. The university presidents who think they can draw from that financial pot are only being drawn into the governor's game.

Florida ranks dead last among states in spending, per capita, on higher education. Yet its governor, and some of its lawmakers, are willing to do worse. What could possibly make them feel proud about that?

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