State universities’ new year starting with a jolt
When college students start the fall term at the state's public universities next week, they can expect fewer choices for majors and classes, more crowded classrooms, and a faculty that's being lured away by other states at an alarming rate.
Deep budget cuts imposed by the state Legislature this year have resulted in the elimination of the industrial engineering major at Florida International University, the Diabetes Research and Training Center at the University of Florida, and many others around the state. The money crunch prompted FIU to put its staff on a four-day work week over the summer.
But even before this year's budget turmoil, Florida's State University System had witnessed at least 10 years of decline in state funding, when adjusted for inflation. That placed the state at or near the bottom nationally in several critical benchmarks of university quality.
Florida now ranks 50th in the nation in faculty-to-student ratio. It is also far below average in funding per student, and last in the number of tenured or tenure-seeking professors per student.
Florida charges the lowest tuition of any state — about $3,500 a year for a full-time load at a four-year institution. That's good for budget-minded students but bad for generating revenue to prop up higher education. And so, programs get eliminated.
"They are cutting too much and eliminating too many programs that could be beneficial to the kids," said Amada Mena, a Miami mother whose two sons attend Florida International University.
To complicate matters, higher-education leaders say a devastating "brain drain" is occurring because professors have received raises in only two of the past five years. Some are going elsewhere. Florida ranks seventh among the 10 biggest states in pay for full-time faculty members, averaging $84,000, according to the National Education Association. Full-time faculty members in North Carolina, the highest paying of the 10 biggest states, earn $97,000 on average.
The State University System is requesting an additional $65 million from the Legislature to give professors a 4 percent raise to stem the outflow. The stewards of the system are asking for an additional $30 million in fresh funding to cover the rising costs of keeping the lights on and the air conditioning running in university buildings. The prospects aren't good, university leaders say, and, in fact, another round of cuts is expected next year.
"I think it's very precarious," Bob Graham, former Florida governor and U.S. senator, said of the system's health. "The university circumstances are the canary in the mine shaft of where the state is going."
ECONOMIC ENGINE
University executives have long argued that higher education is a proven economic engine.
People who obtain a bachelor's degree can expect to earn about $23,000 a year more than those who have only a high-school diploma, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which means about $2,000 more in annual state and local taxes paid by college-educated citizens.
But Florida is 47th in the nation in bachelor's degrees awarded per capita. Only 27 percent of Florida adults between the ages of 25 and 64 have a bachelor's degree, versus 33 percent in the 10 richest states. Florida, which is among those 10 richest, would have to crank out more than a million bachelor's degrees to hit the average.
"The system in Florida is being poorly funded and slowly strangled," said Charles Reed, who headed Florida's State University System and is now chancellor of the California State University System, the biggest in the United States.
"There's no overall master plan for higher education in Florida. There is no single vision."
Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, said the governor believes that "higher learning environments are important to sustaining an enriching and prosperous state." But the governor, through Ivey, declined to be interviewed for this report on his goals for the university system.
According to statistics compiled by the Board of Governors, which oversees the state's public universities, state funding per student in Florida is at a 20-year low, when adjusted for inflation. In 1990, the state provided $15,800 per full-time student. Today: $12,300 and falling.
`BARELY AT A MINIMUM'
State University System Chancellor Mark Rosenberg said the situation needs remedy.
"The mere fact that we are having to turn away eligible freshman, that we are having serious conversations about shrinking the size of the university system, would suggest we're barely at a minimum."
Higher-education specialists are considering a host of possible solutions, including getting the community college system more involved in granting four-year degrees and reforming Bright Futures, the popular program that pays the tuition of students with exemplary grades, said Miami lawyer Dean Colson. He serves on the University of Miami's Board of Trustees and is a special advisor to Crist on higher education.
There are some bright spots. In the past few years, Florida has added three medical schools — at the University of Central Florida, Florida International University (opening in the fall of next year) and Florida State University. And spending for construction is up.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush defended what he saw as key advancements in higher education on his watch. For example, he said that during the past decade, Florida has seen a 64 percent increase in the number of four-year degrees earned by black students, and a 79 percent increase for Hispanic students.
"We need greater accountability in the system," Bush said in a written response to questions. "We should create a statewide plan for each institution that identifies where they should be in terms of graduation rates, retention rates and degree production." But the basic tenets of undergraduate education are in jeopardy.
Take South Florida, where the largest university, FlU, is reducing undergraduate enrollment and receives less funding per undergraduate student than other state schools, according to documents provided by FIU and confirmed by Rosenberg. This year, the university shut its industrial engineering program to cope with budget cuts, despite projections of growing demand for the field made by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
BRAIN DRAIN
FIU philosophy professor Bruce Hauptli, who was the Faculty Senate representative on the school's board of trustees this year, said all of it is contributing to the brain drain.
"Why wouldn't somebody want to go to another state where they could focus more clearly on their educational objectives, instead of having to worry about cramming more students into a classroom than the fire marshal will allow?" Hauptli said.
FIU receives about 20 percent less per student every year than the average for the State University System.
"There are at least 3,000 qualified students out there, 80 percent minority, who are not attending FIU because we don't have the money," said FIU President Modesto "Mitch" Maidique. "I don't see this letting up. I see us as continuing to bleed."
Maidique said his calculations show that Florida would have to beef up funding for higher education in Florida by $1 billion a year to bring it up to the national average.
But doing so would be difficult — in part because of Bright Futures.
As of 2006, Bright Futures had rewarded 140,000 students, many of whom could afford college on their own, with tuition scholarships amounting to $1.6 billion since 1997.
University of Florida President Bernie Machen said Bright Futures has helped keep many of the state's best students in Florida's schools. But he also said the program makes the Legislature reluctant to increase tuition because doing so would impose a greater financial burden on the state.
One possible solution is to put a cap on the amount of tuition that a Bright Futures scholarship will pay, making the student responsible for the difference. That is already being tested through a program of differential tuition, where the state's top research universities can charge a tuition premium that the students have to pay.
"In Florida, if your family is wealthy and you can afford college, you get it for free," Reed said. "If you're poor, you don't get a chance to go. That's just backward."
NATIONAL RANKING
UF is the only university in Florida ranked by U.S. News & World Report in the top 50 in the United States. This year, the school announced layoffs and program closures. Machen said UF could drop in the rankings if the state doesn't act, threatening to leave Florida the only big state without a single university in the top 50.
"We don't have enough money to remain a high-quality system for very long," Machen said.
Colson acknowledges the challenges facing Florida's universities. He said state schools can expect further cuts in funding in the next two years.
"You can't run a business the size of FIU and not know what the funding will be next year," Colson said. "If you don't stop this slide, you run the risk of hurting our university system for generations."