In Florida raw politics trumps thoughtful policy

From the Herald Tribune, By Lloyd Dunkelberger,

In 1980, a powerful state senator decided his hometown university needed a football stadium.

As Senate president, he inserted the provision into the budget bill. But the governor rejected plan, noting the University of West Florida in Pensacola did not even have a football team.

The episode underscores how often raw politics trumps thoughtful policy in Florida’s higher-education system — a point driven home again this month with Gov. Rick Scott’s approval of a new polytechnic university in Lakeland, sought by an influential lawmaker, Senate Budget Chairman J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales.

Scott and Alexander say Florida Polytechnic University will help the state meet its growing needs for graduating highly skilled students with degrees in the sciences, engineering and related technical fields.

“I believe that in the long term it’s going to pay off in jobs,” Scott said. “I think it’s going to be very successful.”

But critics say the sudden decision to embrace a new polytechnic university highlights Florida’s image as a state with a haphazard, politically driven university system. It lacks a strong, unifying vision, yielding schools more known for their mediocrity and sports teams than academic stature.

“Florida has a national reputation these days that it has political intrusion on steroids,” said Charles Reed, the chancellor for the California state university system.

Reed, who has run the California system since 1998, also knows Florida well. He was the state’s university chancellor for a dozen years before leaving for California. And in 1980, he was the chief of staff to former Gov. Bob Graham, who vetoed the legislative plan for the UWF football stadium.

“It has no central plan and no central authority,” Reed said of the Florida system. “That’s kind of like the worst of all combinations.

“All of the campuses have a culture now of what’s best for me, me, me — not what is best for Florida,” he said.

The potential for a stronger, more unified Florida university system rests in the Board of Governors, the constitutionally authorized body overseeing the schools.

Graham, the former governor and U.S. senator, pushed the creation of the BOG, which was approved by voters in 2002 — after the Legislature abolished the former university oversight panel, the state Board of Regents, in 2001.

Graham envisioned the BOG as a constitutionally authorized autonomous group that could free the Florida universities from some of the political interference — modeling itself after similar successful governance systems in states like California, Michigan and North Carolina.

“There is no example of a superior system in America that is as politicized as Florida is now,” Graham said.

The BOG had laid out a plan for moving the original polytechnic campus in Lakeland — under the control of the University of South Florida — to an independent status. But the conversion was expected to take years under USF’s supervision.

Alexander and other top lawmakers pushed through the bill (SB 1994), signed by Scott, that will create an independent university on July 1.

Graham said he sees the creation of the new school as a test of the BOG’s authority.

“In my judgment, the board is now going to be faced with the question of what is it going to do?” Graham said. “Is it going to assert its constitutional authority?”

But the powers of the BOG and its relationship with the Legislature remain in flux, with a lawsuit pending before the Florida Supreme Court over the board’s ability to control university tuition and fees as opposed to the Legislature’s authority.

Thus far, state lawmakers have prevailed in lower court rulings by asserting that “the power to raise and appropriate funds remains exclusively with the Legislature.”

The lawsuit, initiated by Graham and other higher education advocates, lays out more than a half-century of fighting between those who wanted a more autonomous university system and lawmakers, who want to control the money and policy decisions.

It dates all the way back to the notorious Johns Committee in 1956, set up by the state Senate to weed out communists, homosexuals and others deemed “subversives” in the university system.

It includes repeated attempts by the Legislature to abolish the then Board of Regents. In 1980, the measure passed the Legislature, only to be vetoed by Graham.

In 2001, lawmakers finally succeeded — after a battle between top lawmakers and the Board of Regents over creating new professional schools.

In a speech before the influential Council of 100 business group last fall, Reed said the state’s lack of a strong, independent body to oversee the state’s universities was devastating to Florida.

“Everyone wants law schools, medical schools and graduate programs because they are prestigious,” Reed said. “So now, schools are creating more grad programs at the expense of undergraduate programs — with the dollars generated by undergraduate enrollment.

“These low enrollment duplicative graduate programs have not served the state well. It’s turned into what the local chamber wants, not what the state needs.”

Like Graham, Reed said he wants to see a stronger role for the BOG. But he said at this point the board doesn’t “have any juice or respect.”

“It takes guts. It takes a governor that is going to back them up,” Reed said. “And they don’t have any of that.”

And as for the idea of Florida creating a polytechnic university, Reed, who has two polytechnic schools in his system, said it is a mistake for Florida, noting the high cost of the school and the question of whether the state can attract students ideally suited for the program.

“The last time I drove around Lakeland I saw a lot of phosphate pits. I didn’t see a Silicon Valley there,” Reed said.

http://htpolitics.com/2012/04/28/critics-say-haphazard-politically-driven-university-system-hampers-florida/