Higher Ed funding critical for Florida's future, Tampa Tribune

January 4, 2009

Florida lawmakers have an amazingly difficult task before them as they go to work in 2009. They must find drastic cuts to balance the state budget, or find revenue elsewhere. Most importantly, they must keep vital services while finding ways to cut the budget. One of the most important areas they have to trim involves our institutions of higher education, and so far they aren't doing so well.

According to a Palm Beach Post story, top researchers at our universities are pulling out and moving due to Florida's budget crisis. This means hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants, and all the revenue that such research brings to the state, are lost. Along with that lost money, we lose our best and brightest students to other universities where the best professors move to and take their grant money.

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Researchers leaving state and taking their grants, Palm Beach Post

By December 25, 2008
By Kimberly Miller

When a lead Florida State University researcher needed five faculty members last year to start a landmark center dedicated to studying autism, state budget cuts prevented the school from hiring the additional professors.

The Ohio State University, however, had the money, recruited the researcher - and his more than $1 million in federal grants - and in a few years could be reaping the benefits of an autism program that may bring $10 million annually to the school.

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Education gets another kick in the teeth, Miami Herald

By Fred Grimm
November 23, 2008

S tudents spilling out of the FAU tower in downtown Fort Lauderdale didn't express much enthusiasm for the governor's tuition hike.

Not if ''that sucks'' means what I think it means.

''They're going to raise our tuition 15 percent. Does that mean the college programs will be improved 15 percent?'' Slavi Gorgoski asked.

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Gov. Crist's overdue epiphany, The Ledger (Lakeland)

November 29, 2008


Finally, Gov. Charlie Crist has stopped turning a blind eye to the dire financial plight of Florida's public universities.

The governor this month reversed two years of inexplicable and harmful opposition to raising tuition rates at Florida's 11 state universities and unveiled a "reform" proposal that would, among other things, allow the schools to increase tuition as much as 15 percent a year, but no more than 40 percent in a three-year period. Analysts estimate the tuition hikes could generate as much as $1.5 billion in new and badly needed higher-education funding over the next seven years.

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Top administrator leaving Flrodia for position at Duke, Gainesville Sun

By Nathan Crabbe
November 6 2008


A top University of Florida administrator who oversaw employment issues from labor negotiations to layoffs will be leaving UF for Duke University.

Kyle Cavanaugh, UF's senior vice president for administration, will start Feb. 1 as vice president for human resources at Duke. He started in that same position at UF in 2005, before the senior vice president post was created for him.

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Budget cuts, brain drain, drown Florida universities, Medill Reports (Washington D.C.)

By Majorie Korn
October 23, 2008

WASHINGTON – When the economy was good there was nothing hotter than Florida—the real estate market reached record-highs, consumer spending was strong and public universities expanded. But like Icarus, the Sunshine State’s economy melted and the public universities that relied on state tax revenue have been forced to undergo significant budget cuts.

Florida is one of nine states that do not collect income taxes. It also posted the second highest home foreclosure rate in the country for September, according to RealtyTrac Inc. While property taxes do not directly fund public higher education, construction taxes do. Housing starts across the U.S. were down 6.3 percent in September from August and more than 31 percent from a year prior, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

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More cuts possible, but UF hopes to avoid it, Herald Tribune

By Nathan Crabbe
August 31, 2008

The University of Florida has lost 115 faculty members since this time last year, but not because of a feared brain drain, UF President Bernie Machen told the Faculty Senate last week.

Machen said a nearly 3 percent drop in the size of the faculty is due to retirements and a freeze on hiring with limited exceptions. But he said more cuts could hasten the departure of faculty and harm the university in other ways.

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Machen says UF needs more revenue in State of University address, Independent Florida Alligator

By Ileana Morales
August 29, 2008

UF President Bernie Machen said in his State of the University address Thursday that UF needs to focus on ways to build new revenue and preserve its resources — even after budget cuts.

At the first Faculty Senate meeting of the year, he told senators that UF’s Florida Tomorrow capital campaign and the Differential Tuition Program are generating millions of dollars for the university, but UF needs to also work on getting students to graduate faster as it receives more applications.

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Small portions: State universities facing tough times, Tallahassee Democrat

August 23, 2008

A comic used to tell a joke about a woman at a restaurant whose dinner entree fell below acceptable standards.

"I wouldn't feed this to my dog!" she tells the waiter. "And the portion is so small!"

With the fall semester set to begin Monday at Florida's public universities, these institutions are increasingly in danger of becoming a version of that restaurant.

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Season of Gloom, Gator Sports (Gainesville Sun)

August 19, 2008


The start of a new academic year is usually an occasion for hope and optimism in this college town. But with Florida facing its most severe economic downturn in decades, its state universities are feeling the pinch.

Last week state economists said Florida is facing another $1.8 billion revenue shortfall. Although Gov. Crist is considering using state reserves and money from the tobacco fund to help balance the budget, the prospects of still more cuts loom large.

That's especially bad news for UF and its sister institutions. As the Miami Herald reported last week, as state university students begin classes "they can expect fewer choices for majors and classes, more crowded classrooms, and a faculty that's being lured away by other states at an alarming rate."

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Budget cuts another blow to weakened universities, Miami Herald

By Oscar Corral
August 17, 2008

When college students start the fall term at the state's public universities next week, they can expect fewer choices for majors and classes, more crowded classrooms, and a faculty that's being lured away by other states at an alarming rate.

Deep budget cuts imposed by the state Legislature this year have resulted in the elimination of the industrial engineering major at Florida International University, the Diabetes Research and Training Center at the University of Florida, and many others around the state. The money crunch prompted FIU to put its staff on a four-day work week over the summer.

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Our View: Investing in tomorrow, Florida Today

August 12, 2008

It's an exodus the state must stop, or badly damage its already unstable economic future.

We're talking about the brain drain of top talent at state universities as nationally known professors pack their bags and head to posts in states that pay more -- and where there's more support for excellence in higher education.

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Pay Florida's professors, Palm Beach Post

August 11, 2008


Florida's 11 public universities have made an advance request for $65.4 million to retain faculty and staff members who have not had raises in two years. Yet the Legislature is looking at another major shortage in the 2009-10 budget. Something has to give. In this case, it's the Legislature.

Demand for science-based skills is high, for example, and research grants are portable. So not only are professors leaving, they're taking their money with them. At Florida International University, even the history department is down 37 percent as one professor leaves for the University of Tennessee, another for the University of North Carolina. "We have no shot at keeping" many of them, said university system Chancellor Mark Rosenberg. "And since everybody's networked, it's difficult to get good people to come down because they know the situation" in Florida.

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Florida's skinflint sheepskins, Palm Beach Post

August 10, 2008


Florida has taken pride in offering a college education at a bargain-basement price, but students are starting to get what their parents are paying for.

Consider this statistic:

If Florida's 11 public universities raised their lowest-in-the-nation tuition 1 percent statewide, it would bring in all of $4 million. This year and last year, the Legislature cut $200 million from the universities' budgets. So the colleges would have to raise tuition 50 percent just to make up what they lost.

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Privitization is key to saving UF, Gainesville Sun

By Bill Cunningham
August 10, 2008

UF President Bernie Machen announced recently that Florida should invade its "rainy day" fund of more than $3 billion to relieve the institution's financial crisis.

Readers and members of the university community will recall that last spring the state legislature cut UF's budget by some $47 million, allegedly eliminating about 430 faculty and staff positions (some vacant), necessitating personnel layoffs, and curtailing or modifying a number of academic programs, especially in languages but including biological and social sciences.

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Board OKs request to up faculty pay at UF, Gainesville Sun

August 8, 2008
By Nathan Crabbe

JACKSONVILLE - - When the last professor leaves Florida, please turn off the lights.

The situation isn't that dire yet, but the Florida Board of Governors on Thursday acknowledged that state universities face the challenge of fleeing faculty and skyrocketing energy costs.

The board unanimously approved a legislative request for nearly $65 million to raise faculty pay to stem the so-called brain drain. The University of Florida and other state schools have seen faculty departures fueled by budget cuts, estimated at one university to be happening at three times the rate of previous years.

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Florida universities' governing board approves $450 million budget increase, News-Press (Ft. Myers)

By Stephen D. Price
August 7, 2008

JACKSONVILLE — The Florida Board of Governors approved a $3.7 billion budget request Thursday, a $350 million increase over current-year spending.

Officials said they realize requesting a budget increase while the economy is poor may be a pipe dream, but they are obligated to spell out all the State University System's needs.

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Chancellor: Allocate $65.4 million to help stop "brain drain" of Florida university faculty, Treasure Coast Palm

By Scott Travis
August 5, 2008

Florida's budget-strapped universities may deteriorate in quality as other states siphon off the most talented faculty, a top education official says.

Mark Rosenberg, chancellor of the State University System, is recommending that the Legislature allocate $65.4 million to help stop "brain drain." This would mean a 4-percent raise for all faculty if spread evenly across the board. The Board of Governors, the policy making board for public universities, will discuss the proposal at meetings Wednesday and Thursday.

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Board of Governors to request $56.8 million for university pay raises, Independent Florida Alligator

By Katie Sanders
July 31, 2008

Enticing Florida universities’ faculty and staff with pay raises seems to be the method of choice for administrators anxious to solve the state’s intellectual “brain drain.”The Board of Governors, the State University System’s highest governing body, is set to ask for $56.8 million of the 2009–2010 state budget to be allocated for pay raises for faculty and staff of Florida’s 11 public universities.

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UF faculty and staff to get small raises, Independent Florida Alligator

By Katie Sanders
July 25, 2008

UF President Bernie Machen announced a plan Friday to give faculty and staff small pay raises for the first time in two years.

Faculty will receive 3 percent merit-based raises based on criteria set by each college’s dean. All staff will receive an across-the-board 2 percent raise.

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