Engineering college split stands to violate Florida’s consent decree with USDOE Office of Civil Rights

Back during the 1970s, the federal government gave Florida and a number of other states a choice. They could either start complying in honesty with Congressional laws that mandated the desegregation of higher education or pay the consequences. Those consequences included a loss of eligibility for millions in federal education funding.

The State of Florida avoided those possible federal penalties by entering into a desegregation consent decree with the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. During the 1980s, it moved to fulfill part of that consent decree by agreeing to fully fund an engineering school at FAMU. FAMU had received authorization to open an engineering school back in 1949, but had not received a sufficient level of monetary support from the state.

Florida State University also wanted an engineering school at the time and successfully lobbied to be part of the one at FAMU. That led to the creation of the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering.

A proposal by Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, now threatens to place Florida in violation of the federal consent decree, which is currently enforced by the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education.

Thrasher wants to give FSU its own independent College of Engineering. He says that FAMU can keep the facility in Innovation Park and the operational budget of about $10 million. But Thrasher hasn’t proposed any funds to permit FAMU to hire professors to replace 36 of the faculty members that FSU will take away.

In the absence of money for those faculty replacements, FAMU might not have enough professors to run all of the five academic departments in the E-College. That could lead those programs to lose their accreditation with the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET).

If FAMU is denied the financial resources to run an engineering college that meets ABET standards, then Florida will fail to uphold its end of the consent decree with the USDOE Office of Civil Rights.

Back in October of 2013, a federal judge declared that the State of Maryland was out-of-compliance with its consent decree with the USDOE Office of Civil Rights. It looks like Florida could be the next in line for such a federal court ruling.

Editor's note: This post contains corrections made on April 20, 2014.