Higher education not spared from Scott's cuts

From the Orlando Sentinel

by Aaron Deslatte

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott’s budget cuts $340 million from college and university education and research by not restoring federal stimulus dollars, but makes up lost federal cash by essentially keeping funding flat for Bright Futures scholarships received by Florida students.

House lawmakers pounced on that discrepancy Wednesday in the second day of hearings on the governor’s proposed $56.9 billion spending plan.

The overall spending plan cuts education across the board by more than $3 billion — a figure that shocked and awed parents, teachers and school administrators this week. State university education and research would get $2.07 billion in the governor’s budget, a $217 million decrease from this year.

State college and vocational programs would get $996.6 million, which equals a $123 million cut.

“The colleges have for the last several years been able to do more with less, and this budget asks them again to do more with less,” Scott policy advisor Scott Kittel told the House Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee.

But lawmakers questioned why the governor would keep funding Bright Futures while slashing higher education institutions.

“Colleges have experienced a great amount of enrollment due to the economic downturn, and they have to accept everybody,” said Rep. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland.

High Education budget chair Marlene O’Toole, R-The Villages, questioned why Scott would cut college career and vocational training when his self-professed mission was to put people back to work.

“How does that help the workforce get to work?” O’Toole said. “How do we put them to work in our work centers if we shut them down in some manner?”

Scott’s budget also precludes colleges from raising tuition rates, although Florida’s research universities have the authority through a “tuition differential” to raise tuition up to 15 percent annually.

“I don’t quite agree with not allowing tuition increases. In a manner of time we’ll have some schools saying we ought to close our doors as well,” O’Toole said.

Rep. Dwayne Taylor, D-Daytona Beach, also took umbrage with Kittel’s suggestion that colleges and universities could do more with less.

“Everybody is cutting they’re cutting. They’re cutting teachers. They’re cutting professors,” he said. “Generally you do more with more. You do less with less. I don’t know how you can claim they will do more with less.”

Taylor also demanded to know why Scott was labeling historically black schools as “special interests.”

Scott’s plan would cut $16.4 million in “earmarks” for tuition assistance grants or operational costs for private colleges and universities, including historically black schools, the University of Miami’s diabetes center and medical training lab, and Nova Southeastern University.

The governor’s budget also guts two earmarks for politically supported projects: $1 million for the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition and $9.1 million for the Moffitt Cancer Center.

Kittel said Scott wasn’t singling out historically black schools.

“I would not want your job,” Stargel joked at one point. “I would not want your job either,” Kittel replied.

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2011/02/house-pounces-on-scotts-higher-education-budget-cuts.html