Stimulus welcome for UF faculty

The University of Florida is playing it smart in using $10 million in federal stimulus funds to hire up to 100 new professors this year. Normally, it is unwise to spend one-time money on recurring costs such as salaries. But in this case, the federal dollars will serve merely as a bridge until money flows in from the new differential tuition rates, which took effect last week.

Faculty are the heart and soul of a university, the people who give the education engine its horsepower. With budget cuts in recent years and the departure of 81 professors, the university's national aspirations were stalling.

But just as some UF professors were lured away during tight times, the university can use this new money to do some cherry-picking of its own, particularly from the hard-hit California university system. The new hires will allow the university to reassess its highest priorities and to rebalance where needed, such as adding more professors in high-demand departments.

Over the past three years, UF has dealt with cuts amounting to 20 percent of its state funding and has reduced its budget by nearly $150 million. The university is still huge — it has 49,600 students this year — but it is gradually cutting undergraduate enrollment by 4,000 students in the face of economic realities.

UF's ratio of students to tenure or tenure-track faculty is too high at 20-1. So it still has a long way to go to reduce that ratio to where it should be, perhaps 13-1. In the short term, using the stimulus money to start making up for some of the losses is a step in the right direction. In the long run, the state still has to renew its commitment to higher education and invest more money in its public universities.