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A Times Editorial
Lawmakers, resentful of the state university Board of Regents, have their prey in their sights. If they have their way, they will devour the regents, undermine the university system and leave USF mangled in the process.
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 19, 2000
Tallahassee lawmakers, blood in their eyes and vengeance in their hearts, are bent on terminating the Board of Regents with extreme prejudice.
And while they wait for the noose to fall around the regents' necks, legislators are rushing to render the regents meaningless in the meantime. House Speaker John Thrasher and other Florida State University boosters are steamrolling their way to a new medical school at FSU that the state does not need. Lawmakers in South Florida are insistent on a new -- and equally unnecessary -- law school in their region. And fellow legislators are being entirely too accommodating of an ill-disposed plan by Sen. Don Sullivan, R-Seminole, to draw and quarter the University of South Florida in the process of adding three new universities to the system.
Chancellor Adam Herbert and the regents are intended to serve as the buffer that protects the university system from such gross political distortions. They have opposed these and other political efforts to manipulate the system in costly and duplicative ways -- which is precisely why lawmakers are so eager to get rid of them.
The politicians are couching their actions in terms of "reforming" higher education and "expanding access" for university students. However, most of the legislative maneuvering has much less to do with reform and access than with money, power and paybacks. Florida's system of higher education is going to be changed, all right, but students -- and the taxpayers who support the system -- may not like the results.
The most sweeping changes are encompassed in a fast-track proposal that would abolish the regents in the course of reorganizing the state education system from pre-kindergarten through graduate school. The University of South Florida would be harmed by these changes, which would bring even greater institutional advantages to the University of Florida and FSU, the schools favored by most legislative leaders.
But USF -- and the entire Tampa Bay community it serves -- would be damaged more directly by Sullivan's plan. Sullivan proposes to create a new four-year university centered at USF's St. Petersburg campus. He says the new school would expand access for Pinellas students who have been underserved by the university system.
Sullivan's frustration with USF's historic subjugation of Pinellas County is justifiable, but the timing of his proposal raises questions about his true motives. Sullivan's plan would reverse the progress made last year when USF gained permission to enroll hundreds of freshmen and sophomores in St. Petersburg. Instead, freshmen and sophomores at the new university would be taught by community college faculty. Sullivan's plan also would decimate the USF graduate courses and faculty based in St. Petersburg. Because the new university would concentrate on undergraduate education, many top researchers and scholars would relocate to Tampa or leave the university altogether. The future of elite programs such as the marine science department would be jeopardized.
Freshmen and sophomores in Pinellas would be harmed. Graduate students and faculty on the St. Petersburg campus would be harmed. USF administrators based in St. Petersburg, many of whom have been critical of lack of support from Tampa over the years, are solidly opposed to Sullivan's plan. Top city officials oppose his plan. Herbert and the regents (remember them?) oppose his plan.
So who likes it? Well, St. Petersburg Junior College President Carl Kuttler likes it. SPJC officials did their best to kill USF's expansion of undergraduate programs in St. Petersburg a year ago, and Sullivan's plan gives them a vehicle for reversing that decision.
Officials at FSU and UF, along with their boosters in the Legislature, also would be happy to see USF carved up. They don't relish the intensified competition for resources from another growing research university in the system. Lawmakers, sensing USF's current weakness, are busily poaching. Incoming Senate President John McKay, an FSU booster, is behind an effort to give FSU control of the Ringling Museum adjoining USF's Sarasota campus. There are persistent rumors that FSU wants to get its hands on the marine sciences program in St. Petersburg. And McKay has joined Sullivan in advocating an independent university located on USF's Sarasota campus.
After building up decades of resentment over their inability to turn our public universities into their own patronage system, lawmakers smell blood. The Board of Regents will be the main course in their feeding frenzy, but USF is in danger of being chewed up, too. Gov. Jeb Bush is on record as supporting a thoughtful reorganization of Florida's system of education, but no first-class university system in the country has a form of governance remotely similar to the one these changes would bring. The current free-for-all is a travesty of reform. If the Legislature doesn't temper its own excesses, it will be up to the governor to protect our universities from damage that could take decades to heal.