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Florida’s public universities have not, as of yet, attained the prestige that states like Michigan, Virginia and North Carolina can claim for their flagship universities.  This is understandable when you take into consideration that Florida is a young state whose population growth and wealth didn’t take off until the 1970’s.  Even now, many of its wealthiest residents grew up, were educated and made their money elsewhere.  Consequently, small population and nominal private endowments have historically limited Florida’s universities.

This began to change in 1985 when the University of Florida attained membership in the American Association of Universities (AAU).  The AAU has rigorous membership standards and its members are widely viewed as the most elite of American universities. In fact, Florida State University has targeted membership in AAU as one of its highest goals as it seeks to grow its stature and reputation. Given their growth, greater research dollars and more accomplished student bodies, the University of South Florida and the University of Central Florida are also logical candidates to attain “flagship” status and then one day seek AAU membership.

These are lofty goals and will be very challenging for each university to meet.  However, they are important goals that will bring vast benefits to the state and local communities, as universities are massive economic engines unto themselves. Going from good to great is never an easy endeavor, but Florida’s universities have faced massive headwinds in the last few decades and now face a new potential challenge to their success.

The first headwind arrived in the early 2000’s when Florida’s legislature reneged on its commitment to fund matching gifts to the Alec Courtelis Facilities Enhancement Grant Program.   One can only imagine the quality of the facilities that would exist on Florida’s campuses had this program endured.  The state then created a redundant and convoluted governance system for higher education that remains wasteful, confusing and illogical. Then, Florida’s Governor imposed a rigid mandate against tuition increases on the universities, despite Florida schools already having nearly the lowest tuition in the country, all while keeping uniform pricing across the entire system, further devaluing the education at our best schools.

If these challenges were not enough, all of this occurred during a time of budget cuts and decreased funding that leaves Florida’s best universities with state funding per student down by 22.7% since 2008.  State funding as a percent of total operating budgets is also way down.  In short, the universities have been lied to, given more grief and supervision, less money and even less authority to determine their own prices or control their own destinies.  And now House Speaker Richard Corcoran is proposing to make things even worse, picking a gratuitous fight over state-paid fundraisers and public records of university foundations.