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A Times Editorial
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 20, 2001
Assault on education
First of two parts
Through their inadequate funding and inappropriate meddling, Tallahassee lawmakers are doing an injustice to Florida's education system. Today, we look at the effects of the past legislative session on the state university system. Monday, the focus turns to our public schools.
Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature aren't just turning the governance of the state university system on its head. While they're at it, they're shaking the loose change out of the system's pockets, too.
The state's 2001-02 budget for our universities is penurious to the point of being punitive. The university system's enrollment is expected to increase by more than 5,000 students this fall, and the campuses' expenses for energy and other necessities are increasing like everyone else's. Yet the Legislature has cut the state's share of higher education spending by $12-million for the coming year. If the governor vetoes a proposed 7.5-percent tuition increase, the system will lose another $30-million. Bush is said to be considering rejecting the tuition increase because it differs from the formula he proposed, but a veto would be irresponsible. Even with the increase, Florida's undergraduate tuition and fees would still be the lowest in the South.
The response of some top lawmakers to the concerns of the universities' supporters has been typical of Tallahassee's broader hostility toward public education. "These folks usually have an abundance of money anyway," Senate President John McKay said of the universities. Has he checked the cramped and antiquated facilities at New College and the University of South Florida's Sarasota campus? Would he want to live on the average assistant professor's salary? Bush dismissively suggested that the universities' budget problems would be solved if professors simply taught an extra class each semester. Which part of their jobs would he like them to give up in return? Professional and community service? The research that has built such assets as the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the Interstate 4 high-tech corridor?
The reputation of Florida's university system already has suffered grievous damage as a result of lawmakers' overbearing meddling. Now lawmakers are cutting funding in ways that compromise the system's ability to compete for top professors and students, lucrative research grants and other assets critical to our universities and our economic future. Bush and the Legislature abolished the Board of Regents, which had served as the only real buffer against the thorough politicization of the university system. Chancellor Adam Herbert resigned earlier this year once the outline of the coming changes became clear to him. A new governing structure is supposed to be in place on July 1. In the meantime, the skeleton crew left in the system's administrative offices can't provide adequate advocacy for the universities in the face of lawmakers' assaults.
Consider just some of the mischief of the past two legislative sessions: Lawmakers approved a new medical school and two new law schools the state doesn't need -- and then failed to give them the level of funding required to establish themselves as adequate programs. They sneaked in an amendment that forces the state's medical schools to alter their admissions policies for the benefit of an influential lobbyist. McKay and Sen. Don Sullivan, R-Largo, turned USF into their personal patronage pie, spinning New College away as an independent member of the university system (with the attendant administrative costs) and giving new autonomy to the USF campuses in St. Petersburg and Sarasota. And Sullivan made a special deal with St. Petersburg Junior College officials that allows the school to begin offering four-year degrees.
And while the Legislature was turning two-year schools into four-year schools, they were, in effect, turning our four-year schools into three-year schools for many Florida students depending on the Bright Futures program for financial support.
This nugget was sneaked through the Legislature, without public debate, by House Speaker Tom Feeney: Recipients of Bright Futures scholarships who enroll in a state university will be required to take at least five College-Level Examination Program advanced-placement exams. "Credit earned by passing a test or by completing an accelerated high school course," notes the Legislature's session summary, "reduces eligibility for Bright Futures by the number of college credit hours earned."
In other words, the state hopes to save a little Bright Futures money by giving students who ace the CLEP tests only three years of financial support instead of four. Tough luck to students who hoped to use advanced placement to expand their curriculum choices rather than being rushed through college in three years. Call it the "anti-merit provision." It amounts to an invitation to our best young minds to leave Florida if they want full financial support for college. And, by the way, the universities will have to absorb the costs of the expanded testing requirement.
Florida politicians such as Bush, Feeney, Sullivan and Phil Handy, head of the task force that reorganized the state education system, have an extraordinarily narrow view of the role of a university system in modern society. But even according to the purely economic criteria they seem to understand, the structural and financial pressures they have placed on our university system could harm Florida for generations to come. Top students, professors and university administrators already have begun fleeing Florida as news of the educational turmoil here has spread. Top businesses, particularly those reliant on a skilled workforce and sophisticated customer base, will shun Florida if its universities and public schools are inadequate. Once Florida's business leaders start voicing the same concerns as our academic leaders, the Tallahassee politicians may finally begin to rethink their policy of education on the cheap.