From Forbes, by David DiSalvo
Florida Governor Rick Scott signed the 2012 state budget at a Jacksonville elementary school, presumably to emphasize the budget’s inclusion of an additional $1 billion for education. That would be impressive, if not for the fact that last year he cut the state’s education budget by $1.3 billion. That’s like burning down someone’s house, replacing it with the wooden frame of a house and calling it progress.
Such is the track record of Governor Scott, whose proficiency with double speak would have made Orwell wince. While claiming to be Florida’s greatest champion for education, he’s busy approving plans that hamstring educators at every level — and leave students out in the cold.
University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department, Increases Athletic Budgets. Hmm. Steven SalzbergContributor
Case in point: my Forbes colleague Steven Salzberg reports on a plan to cut–as in completely eradicate–the University of Florida‘s (UF) computer and information science department — a move couched as a consequence of Scott’s university-neutering budget. Quoting Salzberg:
The University of Florida announced this past week that it was dropping its computer science department, which will allow it to save about $1.7 million. The school is eliminating all funding for teaching assistants in computer science, cutting the graduate and research programs entirely, and moving the tattered remnants into other departments.
Those “tattered remnants” include the hopes and aspirations of students working toward a computer science degree at the state’s flagship university. And those students aren’t taking it lightly. Protests are afoot and more are on the way. As a UF alum, I empathize with them and can only shake my head at such an appallingly shortsighted decision.
At the same time, Scott approved plans to fund a brand new university near Tampa called Florida Polytechnic University. As you may know, Tampa is already home to one of the largest universities in the state, the University of South Florida (USF), which will be suffering severe budget cuts in the very same budget that includes funding for a new school just a few miles away. Confused? That would be the appropriate response to decisions made the Rick Scott way, which defy logic, to say nothing of fairness and consistency.
How USF got the shaft while Scott blessed the creation of a new university has nothing to do with logic or fairness, and everything to do with power politics. In March, the budget was locked up because the Republican chairman of the budget committee, State Senator JD Alexander, demanded that USF’s Lakeland campus, which is in his district, be made into an independent state university. Alexander is serving his last year as a Senator due to term limits and wants his legacy to include something big, and as the budget chairman, he was in a position to get his way.
When USF opposed Alexander’s plan, it suddenly faced a 58 percent reduction in its budget — the price a school evidently pays for bucking the chairman of the budget committee. In the end, Alexander got his new university and USF got hit with a less punitive budget cut.
In total, Scott’s new budget includes $300 million in cuts for the state’s 11 universities, to be split among them. UF is paying its bill, in part, by sacrificing what is arguably one of the most essential departments on campus. In a technology-driven economy, what exactly is the message to high school students hoping to attend Florida’s flagship school when they see a major technology-centered department summarily beheaded?
Of course, Scott is hardly alone in these duplicitous schemes. State legislators and their bureaucratic sycophants own as much blame as the Governor, and university presidents like UF’s Bernie Machen lack the fortitude to stand against plans that undermine their school’s position. UF’s budget has suffered a 30 percent cutback over the last six years while Machen and his cronies fiddled. At the same time, Machen threw two big thumbs up to UF’s athletic department when it received a $2 million increase from last year, for a total budget of $99 million, according to The Gainesville Sun.
That’s correct: dismantling the computer and information science department will save the university $1.7 million, while the athletic department receives an additional $2 million. That would also be confusing until you follow the money trail just a few steps farther and realize that athletics at UF, as with most large state universities, are exalted cash cows with no peers among academic departments. What they demand, they receive.
What does Rick Scott have to say about all of this? Not much, though he’s quick to give himself an attaboy. Quoting from his April 17 guest editorial in the Orlando Sentinel:
Making ends meet in the face of a $1.2 billion budget shortfall this year, on top of an even larger, $3.7 billion shortfall from last year was not an easy task, while still finding a way to pour more than a billion additional dollars into our schools. But we must also look over the horizon, by spending the money it takes now to make Florida one of the most attractive labor markets in the nation. We accomplish this by investing in high-quality education, raising education standards and rewarding good teachers and the quality student outcomes they consistently produce.
Noble talk, indeed – though it hardly matches the facts. The facts, to summarize, are that Scott has green lighted the creation of Florida’s 12th independent state university to appease the budget committee chairman, while simultaneously cutting $300 million from the budgets of the state’s 11 already established universities. As a consequence, UF’s leadership decided to hold a fire sale at the computer and information science department — a department that has for many years been capably providing precisely the technology-focused education that Scott claims the new university will provide. In tandem, UF’s athletic department received a $2 million bonus to keep TV advertising and licensed merchandise dollars rolling in.
Meanwhile in Tampa, the University of South Florida is struggling with how to overcome its portion of the $300 million cut, while down the road in Lakeland a new university is formed with state funding that could be used to fortify an already crowded field of state schools, including USF.
And to top it all off, Scott is not allowing Florida’s state universities to raise tuition to cover shortfalls in their academic budgets. In some cases that means universities will have to close branch campuses that traditionally serve students that work full-time while also going to school. For instance, Florida Atlantic University’s $24.8 million reduction has prompted officials this week to propose closing its downtown Fort Lauderdale campus and Treasure Coast campus in Port St. Lucie.
Those are the facts. Scott and his acolytes in state government can gloss over them all they like, but the hard truth is that Florida’s university students, and students to come, are going to be the ones reaping the whirlwind of shortsightedness and cronyism that characterize Governor Scott’s administration.
www.daviddisalvo.org
http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/04/23/how-governor-rick-scott-is-sabotaging-floridas-universities/
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