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Thursday, January 2, 2014

Florida legislators have little respect for a college education

You know for a state that says they want all it’s kids to go to college they sure act differently. Take for example the changes to the Dual Enrollment laws, which stripped funding from the districts and will effectively end many kids opportunities.

Then couple that with how prepaid college plan and bright futures get more difficult and Florida has really shown its true colors about kids going to college

Two education programs that really helped out a lot of working class families have been dramatically altered here in Florida. The Sun Sentinel is saying that the pre-paid college enrollment fund Florida Prepaid used to provide a cheap and simple way to save money for college, but these days it's more complicated.
The cost of the most popular four-year university plan has quadrupled since 2006. At the same time, the costs of college tuition have become difficult to predict, with prices increasing 15 percent some years and nothing others.
Next Bright Futures aren’t so bright, from the Fort Meyers press; Florida’s scholarship program for high-achieving students once covered 100 percent of tuition for top scholars.
Years of state budget cutbacks and too many smart students, however, have turned Bright Futures into a shell of its former self. Now, the best a student can do is get about half of the tuition covered by Bright Futures, which is funded through the Florida Lottery.
Florida really had one of the best systems around but after years of cuts it is a shade of its former self. These are three programs that really helped out a lot of poor and middle class families and now they won’t. I don’t call that progress and it is just more proof that Florida pays lip service to the importance of higher education.

1 comment:

  1. I don't think the problem with Bright Futures was "too many bright students." I think it was too much grade inflation. Teachers are pressured to give A's, so students had the GPA to get Bright Futures. However, their ACT and SAT scores were low, but acceptable.

    So tens of thousands of students got the scholarships, arriving at college needing remedial courses and never finishing and getting their degree. I'm glad the ACT and SAT cut score has been raised. Maybe I won't be pressured to inflate grades.

    I would prefer that Bright Futures (Lottery $) help students who are truly college material and not those who are just avoiding joining the work force. I'm frankly tired of hearing millennials described as the "most educated" demographic group. Just because you spent 8 years in college whining your way through a bachelor's and master's degree) doesn't make you educated, especially if you can't tie your shoes, memorize your phone number and address, read cursive, use basic grammar correctly, spell anything, learn your multiplication tables, use an apostrophe, tell time or make change (God forbid I give you an extra penny!).

    Just get the minimum wage job you're going to end up with anyway.

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