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University can't be great on the cheap

The biggest obstacle to the University of Florida's ambition of becoming a nationally elite academic institution is as clear as it has ever been. It's the cheap politicians in Tallahassee.

The politicians, mind you, are all too eager to get VIP seats to see the national champion Gator teams play. But raise the subject of lagging state revenues for higher education or paltry tuitions and watch the Capitol hallways clear out.

Three years ago, the UF trustees decided to up the ante by hiring as president an acclaimed academic, Bernie Machen. His experience included administrative positions at the esteemed flagships in Utah, Michigan and North Carolina, and he started drawing a blueprint to propel UF into the Top 10 public universities.

This year, having been denied more state money and higher tuition, Machen wants an "academic enhancement" fee. But Gov. Charlie Crist and key lawmakers already are shaking their heads no again. Sen. Jim King, a Jacksonville Republican who graduated from Florida State University, acts as though excellence is a dirty word.

"I'm not so sure that in a state that has 11 universities," King told a reporter, "I want to say, 'Gosh you're the flagship, so you deserve to charge more because you're better.' I don't buy into that."

Maybe King and Crist and other lawmakers think UF should be satisfied with offering what amounts to the Blue-and-Orange Light Special. It charges the lowest tuition of 75 flagship universities. Its student-faculty ratio is half-again as big as that of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and it ranks 123rd on measures of "faculty resource."

The fee Machen is seeking wouldn't be necessary in a state that valued higher education, and the politicians who dismiss it as "a back-door tuition increase" are conveniently missing the point. Of course, it is a substitute for higher tuition or more state revenue. But Machen can't get either because lawmakers simply don't care. They are strangling UF, and every other state university, by trying to make every university equally average. It is an attitude that puts being cheap ahead of being great.

[Last modified February 13, 2007, 22:32:26]