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USF consolidation proposal gets no pushback in Florida House committee

"We want all students within the USF family to benefit from the preeminence that is coming,” Rep. Ray Rodrigues said.
 
Rep. Ray Rodrigues, R-Fort Myers, is the sponsor of a massive House higher education bill.
Rep. Ray Rodrigues, R-Fort Myers, is the sponsor of a massive House higher education bill.
Published Jan. 17, 2018|Updated Jan. 17, 2018
A hot-button proposal to unite the University of South Florida System into a single university got no pushback at a House committee meeting Wednesday.
Rep. Ray Rodrigues, R-Fort Myers, touted the consolidation provision after Rep. Larry Ahern, R-Seminole, asked him to explain it.
“By all accounts, USF is going to earn preeminence,” Rodrigues said, nodding to the state’s bonus funding for top-achieving universities. “Our concern from the student perspective is there is no incentive for USF to share the resources that preeminence is going to bring to them beyond the borders of the Tampa campus. We want all students within the USF family to benefit from the preeminence that is coming.”
Rodrigues said that the move would also bring USF in line with other system universities, as it’s the only one with separately accredited institutions.
“As a system, this allows us to have a common metric and a level playing field in how we are measuring preeminence,” Rodrigues said.
He echoed Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, who is behind the USF unification push, in saying, “We believe that a rising tide lifts all boats.”
The committee moved past the USF provision to dig into some of the massive higher education bill’s nitty-gritty elements, discussing what block tuition, transparency measures and graduation metrics would mean for universities. One of the bill’s biggest elements, a massive boost in Bright Futures merit scholarships, won praise from a legislator who had criticized last year’s attempt at overhauling the program.
This year, the bill would not only give top scholars 100 percent of college tuition and most fees, but would also give the next tier of students 75 percent of tuition and most fees.
“We’ve got a lot of improvements in the bill that I have to applaud you on,” said Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando. Still, he said, he wished that the bill would return Bright Futures standards to their original bar, before lawmakers raised qualifications and disproportionately cut out underrepresented students.
Another focus point was an amendment, which passed, that would have the state board of governors conduct a survey to examine whether universities welcome intellectual diversity.
“What is missing is a way to measure whether intellectual diversity really exists, and whether students and faculty feel safe expressing their viewpoints on a college campus,” Rodrigues said.
He called it a “neutral, unbiased way to determine if our state is truly walking the walk, or if we’re just talking the talk.” He said the board of governors would evaluate the results of the surveys, then pass it to lawmakers, who would determine how to follow up.
Rep. Richard Stark, D-Weston, asked whether universities had voiced concerns about the subject, and Rodrigues said no, that he was inspired by “what we have witnessed in the news.”

“I suppose you mean scenes, I suppose, that conservative voices are being squashed across the country,” Smith said. “What I saw in the news was that our own governor declared a state of emergency because the University of Florida felt compelled to invite a white supremacist to come speak on their campus and all chaos broke out as a result.”

Besides the amendment, nearly all committee members praised Rodrigues for his work on the bill, which now moves to higher education appropriations, then the education committee.