Opinion: SUS leaders chose poor lobbying strategy

There’s no doubt that the Florida Legislature is the primary culprit behind today’s State University System funding crisis. But with that being said, it’s important to note that the lawmakers had accomplices: the Board of Governors and the 11 SUS presidents.

The SUS leaders all understood that the legislature has a long history of raising tuition in one hand while cutting multimillions from public university budgets in the other.

But even with that knowledge, they went along with a plan to permit every university to increase tuition by an up to 15 percent “differential” that goes beyond the rates set in the annual appropriations bill.

Many legislators are now using the differential as a political cover to justify deeper cuts to public universities. They claim that the SUS can simply make up the difference through longterm, annual tuition hikes.

It should be noted that the SUS leaders did not anticipate that universities would face a potential reduction of $200 million. But, the BOG and presidents should have known that their support of the differential would embolden the lawmakers who think it is a good idea to slice and dice university budgets.

Better budget proposals were available. Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson proposed zero tuition hikes, zero educational spending cuts, and closing sales tax loopholes in order to find more revenue for areas such as the SUS.

“Dumping tuition hikes into the laps of students and their families is the wrong move at the wrong time,” Lawson said. “It’s the latest in a long line of bad moves shifting the state’s funding obligations down to the people, and the people are suffering enough.”

However, the SUS leaders chose to work against Lawson’s initiative by playing right into the hands of the “hike tuition-reduce spending” majority in the legislature.

Since most FAMU students simply take smaller course loads as college gets more expensive, it’s questionable whether FAMU will be able raise revenue from tuition increases. Also, smaller course loads hurt FAMU’s graduation rate.

Maybe next year, the SUS leaders will understand why it’s important to hold the line against tuition increases instead of providing legislators with an easy excuse to take away even more educational dollars.

Pictured: University of Central Florida President John Hitt and FAMU President James Ammons pleading against SUS cuts at press conference held last week.

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