Florida’s two best-known public universities are poised to benefit from legislation meant to improve their prestige as well as their bottom lines.
The state’s Legislature has passed a bill that would designate Florida State University and the University of Florida as “pre-eminent” universities and would give each institution an extra $15-million per year for five years to hire prominent faculty members and increase spending on research.
The University of Florida would also get extra money to expand its offering of online bachelor’s degrees, while Florida State University would be required to offer a master’s degree in cloud computing and start a program to encourage entrepreneurship.
The measures are part of a sweeping education overhaul that is giving higher-education leaders in the Sunshine State some hope that the deep budget cuts and harsh rhetoric aimed at public colleges in recent years are now behind them. Lawmakers are also considering restoring $300-million in budget cuts that were made in the 2012 legislative session.
“There is that potential,” Eric J. Barron, president of Florida State, said of the improved support from the Legislature, though he warned that there was no guarantee that the governor would sign the bill giving the universities the special status. Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, has not indicated whether or not he supports the measure.
The legislation arose from a proposal by the University of Florida’s president, J. Bernard Machen, to help the institution become a “top 10" university and make it more competitive with major research universities in New York and California. The university is already a member of the Association of American Universities, a group of 62 top research institutions in North America.
But last year, Governor Scott vetoed a similar bill because of provisions that would have given the University of Florida and Florida State more flexibility to raise tuition.
This year’s bill does not include the increased tuition flexibility. And tuition rates for the new online-degree programs would be capped at 75 percent of the cost of courses on the campus.
An Advantage in Online Programs
That doesn’t mean the University of Florida will lose money on its online programs. The legislation would provide $10-million to establish the online programs this year and $5-million in subsequent years to offset potential losses from discounted tuition. The bill also would give the university the ability to charge higher tuition rates for out-of-state students who sign up for online courses.
And the bill would essentially give the university an advantage in offering online courses in the state-university system. While the system’s other 10 universities would be allowed to continue offering individual courses online, the Gainesville campus would begin a large-scale branding and marketing effort to attract students nationwide. If that effort succeeded, it could result in significant new revenue for the institution, which already earns $70-million a year from online courses.
Leaders at the University of Florida declined to comment until the governor signs, or vetoes, the bill.
Faculty members at the University of Florida still have some reservations about the online programs because they won’t know for several months what the programs’ business plan and structure will look like, Cheri Winton Brodeur, chairwoman of the Faculty Senate, wrote in an e-mail.
But over all, they are happier to have the programs at the University of Florida, where there is the potential for guiding the process, than on another campus, she wrote. The Faculty Senate has formed an information-technology committee to help advise Mr. Machen on the issues, wrote Ms. Brodeur, coordinator for the Program Development and Evaluation Center at the university’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Science.
Another provision in the legislation is meant to provide the two “pre-eminent” universities with more regulatory flexibility by allowing the system’s Board of Governors to exempt them from certain state reporting requirements.
While both Florida State and the University of Florida are already highly ranked, they have been hamstrung by rules and low tuition rates that have prevented them from joining the ranks of more elite institutions, said Mr. Barron of Florida State. The added money, Mr. Barron said, would help the universities become not just more prestigious but also more able to offer a high-quality education to students and provide a return on the state’s investment of tax dollars.
“My faculty are susceptible to being raided because they’re not paid as much,” he said. “I would say that’s a waste of money.”
