Bright Futures program needs serious review

As a sample of the kind of legislative demagoguery that has paralyzed the Bright Futures scholarship program, just listen to two key lawmakers react to the university Board of Governors' plan to increase undergraduate tuition next spring by no more than 5 percent.

House Postsecondary Education Chairman David Mealor: "I believe the Board of Governors has compromised the future of Bright Futures."

Senate Higher Education Appropriations Chairwoman Evelyn Lynn: "Bright Futures is important. We've made a commitment and we have to honor that."

Never mind that the Board of Governors has never suggested getting rid of Bright Futures or that lawmakers included enough money in the scholarship fund to cover a full-year 5 percent tuition increase this fall. This is the kind of smear tactic that is employed even when the program is never mentioned.

The scholarship program is a wonderful asset for Florida high school students, but cheap lawmakers are the reason it has undermined the economic viability of public universities. As the program has soared in price, from $75-million in 1997 to $398-million this year, it has come at the direct and indirect expense of the universities themselves.

Over almost the same period, university budgets have been cut a staggering $484-million. Worse, lawmakers won't even let universities help themselves, through higher tuitions. That's because so many students qualify for free and reduced tuition that the state pays either way. As former state Sen. Stephen Wise, once put it: "Every time we raise tuition, we take (money) out of one pants pocket and put it in the other."

The lawmakers who take cheap shots at those who suggest changes to Bright Futures might want to confess some of their own sins. Early on, as the costs soared, they quietly stopped paying Bright Futures for summer courses at the same time they were requiring every student to take at least three summer courses to graduate. This year, they passed a law that would allow tuition increases at the three major research universities, so long as the increase was billed to students and not to Bright Futures.

Bright Futures is 10 years old and could stand a serious review. It has become one of the biggest "merit" scholarship programs in the nation, though it's not exactly for the meritorious. A student can qualify with a B average in high school and an SAT score that is 51 points below the national average. That same student would have almost no chance of being accepted at the University of Florida or Florida State University and perhaps other schools.

The scholarship is also paid whether the student attends a public or private university, whether the student already has a full scholarship, or whether the student has a financial need. Nearly a quarter of the UF students receiving the scholarship in 2004 reported a family income of greater than $150,000.

Almost every academic, business and public interest group that has analyzed Bright Futures over the past decade has recommended change, but lawmakers are satisfied to pander instead. They now seek to cast the Board of Governors, which is asking a court to give it tuition rate authority, as an enemy of students. That's sophistry. The board is fighting to save universities from a Legislature that treats them like diploma mills. Students, too, want their diplomas to mean something.

[Last modified July 23, 2007, 21:55:33]