Florida’s Republican Governor Wants to Stop University Tuition Increases
Well this doesn’t make any sense. I heard Republicans are evil, money obsessed people who care nothing for America’s college students.
Meredith Rutland of the Florida Times-Union reports.
Florida governor calls for end to university tuition increases
Placing himself firmly in the middle of a debate over cost and funding of higher education, Gov. Rick Scott revealed in his State of the State address that one of his priorities this spring will be to get rid of state universities’ ability to increase tuition by 15 percent each year.
“If we want to make higher education more accessible to lower and middle class families, we have to make it more affordable,” he said.
Universities responded to Scott’s comment, saying Florida already has low tuition rates.
Florida is among the cheapest states in the U.S. to attend a public university. It ranked 43rd for four-year, in-state tuition costs in a 2013 College Board report on the cost of higher education in the U.S.
The average cost of in-state tuition nationally was $8,800 a year. In Florida, it’s closer to $6,000 a year, the report stated.
The issue comes down to funding. State appropriations to higher education have consistently decreased since the mid-2000s, according to a recent report by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
At the same time, scholarship programs such as Bright Futures have cut the amount of tuition they cover, and students have had to make up the difference.
University of North Florida’s average tuition for the 2012-2013 school year was $4,281. It was $4,639 a year for Florida State University that academic year. For the University of Florida, it was $6,143 a year.
Florida State College at Jacksonville probably wouldn’t be affected by such a change because the college doesn’t raise its tuition by much, said spokeswoman Jill Johnson. The Times-Union previously reported FSCJ raised its tuition by 3 percent in 2012. In-state tuition at FSCJ is $1,194 per year for this academic year.
Florida governor calls for end to university tuition increases (The Florida Times-Union)
Comments
Scott should proceed full steam ahead with this as a way to keep university administrative costs at bare bones level.If universities are going to spend money, let it be on teaching faculty and material related to learning. So, this is a very good way to come at the problem of adminstrative top heaviness so rampant in American universities today.
I don’t think it really addresses top heaviness in admin at all. I see no provisions that will do this.
The administrators are the ones that appropriate the budget at the school level and have a tendency to make uneven cuts that hurts the teaching side of the schools.
$6,000 a year for tuition isn’t terrible: won’t break the bank for most students. But as Juba says, using tuition costs as a tool to beat on administrative ‘top heaviness’ is a winning idea; it’s difficult for people to take the other side in that argument.
Now add to that argument that not only would you clean up administrative bloat, you’d clean up the academic bloat of nonsense majors, programs and courses, and you have a real chance to change how young people do an in-residence (as opposed to massively on line) education.
A little honesty behind Scott’s motivation.
Florida has a program called Bright Futures that is supposed to be paid for by the State lottery. It is merit based but with grade inflation the number of students that qualify for support has risen every year.
Financially, bright futures is headed for disaster and if the state has to pay the tuition bill however much it may be then the central office would be able to reign in the budget a little by controlling tuition increases. I think it is still headed for the cliff though.
I know this is a bit of a nit-pick, but really? Poli-Sci and gender studies? Those are NOT the same thing. Poli-Sci is closer to economics, and much more politically moderate, than the bulk of social sciences and fine arts (History is WAAAAAY worse). Sure political science is full of liberals and Left-of-Center types just like the rest of the academy, but relatively speaking, it’s one of the more conservative social sciences.
Full disclosure – I am a political scientist.
But my second point is more than picking a nit – the Right needs to get off the whole increasing costs = bad/Leftwing faculty schtick. Faculty salaries are flat, as a percentage of university budgets, over the last 40 years, and the percentage of university teachers who are even tenured (let alone fit the caricature of fat-cat, lazy tenured professors making cash hand-over-fist) has declined dramatically — alot of the teaching being done at university is now by adjunct faculty and lecturers who work with no security and on paltry wages (as low as $1500 a class).
The problem with cost and universities is two-fold: 1) the enormous administrative bureaucracy that has emerged over the last 40 years and 2) the increasing number of amenities and non-academic services provided by the university in order to attract students.
Want to know why your tuition is on the rise? It’s not because of faculty salaries. I’ve been employed in a tenure-track position sense 2007. I’ve recieved a raise precisely twice in that period of time – and the university I’m at currently has no cost-of-living increases. So every year I’m making less than I was the previous year.
Blame the rock wall. Blame the olympic pool. Blame the new athletic facility. Blame the new diversity coordinator, the new Assistant to the Assistant Associate Dean of Does Nothing Much But Has Official Sounding Title and Massive Budget to Spend. Administrative costs at universites have gone up 300% over the last 30 years. It shouldn’t be a surprise — the administrators are the ones who set the budgets and who request the budgets and who make the decisions on salary increases — and since the 1980’s these administrators are NOT faculty. The days of the faculty-run institution are long over to the extent they ever existed. So no surprise they create more and new positions for themselves, positions that have much higher salary lines than even the full professors in academic departments. And those squeeky wheels get the grease.
All this distorted perception of the academy on the Right serves is *those* administrators, who love it when the legislature implements new “assessment” procedures designed to make sure faculty are teaching X or Y or etc. etc. Which is nothing more than piling red tape on red tape, increasingly intrudes on the individual teaching autonomy of professors (which is NOT good for students – that’s what makes our higher education the best in the world and our secondary and elementary education…er…not), and gives them yet MORE excuses for more administrative positions and more bloat in the university budget.
The university needs to cut the administrative bloat, cut all the spa-like niceities, and get back to the work of educating students as the focus. And the fact is, most Republican state legislatures are making it worse. Primarily because the Right has made a big deal out of silly Leftist professors and not enough out of the administrative bloat that is the real source of the scandolous increase in tuition costs over the past few decades. D.GOOCH