“We need to do better than that,” Hukill echoed.
This past legislative session, a similar bill passed through the Florida House and Senate but was defeated by Gov. Scott’s veto. His primary objection was that creating a four-year cap on degrees awarded by a college would be “unnecessarily increasing red tape”.
A key function of the bill would be to create a 13-member State Board of Community Colleges, similar to the Universities’ Board of Governors, to oversee the entire college system and its over $2 billion budget.
Currently, Florida’s college system is under the purview of the state Board of Education, which also oversees K-12 education.
Another primary function of the bill would be to re-structure the college system to be focused on providing associate degrees rather than baccalaureate degrees. To that end, Florida colleges will be barred from accepting greater than 20 percent of admissions for students seeking four-year degrees. In addition, the entire college will be limited to having only 10 percent of students at the institution seeking four-year degrees.
