Even during the best of times, Florida’s commitment to higher education has been paltry, if not outright negligent. For more than twenty years, the state university system has been left reeling as the state withdrew much of its investment from higher education and displaced costs onto students. Since 2008, tuition rates at public four-year colleges in Florida have risen by sixty percent. Just from 2008 to 2018, Florida lawmakers reduced per-student, inflation-adjusted state support for public four-year colleges like FAU, BC and PBSC by over thirteen percent, while tuition at those same colleges and universities increased by sixty percent. At FAU, overall tuition revenue rose since 2008 from roughly $76 million to $136 million, a near doubling, while state funding significantly decreased by $45 million during the same time frame. This is a disastrous funding model for a university that touts its status as a Hispanic Serving Institution and recently created a program to assist first-generation college students in graduating debt free. It is difficult to take seriously the university’s commitment to reduce student debt and serve first-generation students while its administrators accept without public protest a state funding model that views students as little more than revenue streams to offset declining state support.
Faculty are insistently told “to do more with less.” But, in actuality, we are forced to do less with less. For example, FAU’s library budget has remained stagnant for the last ten years, which now requires the gutting of journals, books, and other library resources. This is a suicidal direction for a research university that treats research and learning as secondary concerns rather than the core of the university’s mission.
Now enters the Covid-19 pandemic where the economic fallout will be enormous. FAU administrators rightly worry about decreasing student enrollment due to the hardships that our student body will suffer; more than half are students of color and many come from modest economic means. Administrators plead with faculty to call students to maintain their interest in FAU. But this overall enterprise relies upon a bankrupt logic that continues to shift emotional and other costs on students rather than the state. The onus should not be on students to remain at FAU. The onus should be on state lawmakers to provide the resources for students to continue their pursuit of higher education during times of economic catastrophe.
If FAU and Florida’s universities care to maintain student enrollment and an overall affordable and quality public education for all, presidents, provosts, deans, and faculty are going to have to do something they are unaccustomed to doing: advocate publicly and repeatedly for public education as a public necessity worthy of significant state investment. They have to advocate for increased commitment from the state to invest in education at all levels. The days of blithely accepting state disinvestment in higher education as inevitable are over. During these times of a coming recession, the state university system must support students in multiple ways that help them navigate their loss of jobs, housing, and adequate food. Public higher education exists precisely because of the historic failure of private universities and colleges in providing an affordable quality education for the vast majority of people. Furthermore, public higher education should have the support of the state to make it able to withstand the vagaries of the market. If the state cannot provide this vital assistance in a time of crisis, it has reneged on its commitment to public higher education altogether.
Left to his own devices, Governor Ron DeSantis reveals his lack of imagination as he remains wedded to an austerity mentality that provides $543 million worth of tax cuts for corporations while Florida’s economy crashes and vital funding for public education remains in jeopardy.
Only public higher education can save itself. We need FAU administrators to show integrity and boldness to represent our student body in unprecedented ways by demanding funding from the state to ensure the continued education for students of all backgrounds that FAU claims to proudly represent. We need faculty to write op-eds, speak in public (or virtual) forums, and generally espouse the need for the state to reinvest in public education in ways it hasn’t done in decades. This pandemic is a large, fast and inescapable health and budget crisis in the middle of a large, slow and virtually invisible budget crisis in Florida’s support for public education. It can be the beginning of the end of truly public universities in our state, or it can be an opportunity to build fairer and more just institutions.
UFF-FAU Chapter