FAMU’s six-year graduation rate higher than FAU’s was while Tripp was a trustee

Norman Tripp, a member of the Florida Board of Governors (BOG), loves to talk down to Florida A&M University about its academic performance. But FAMU is doing a better job of graduating its students than Florida Atlantic University did while Tripp was on its Board of Trustees.

The latest six-year graduation rate for FAMU is 47.29 percent for the Class of 2017. The six-year graduation rate at FAU never even got to 40 percent while Tripp was a trustee there.

Back in 2001, Gov. Jeb Bush chose Tripp to be a member of the first-ever Board of Trustees at FAU. The six-year graduation rate at the university was 39.8 percent that year. That was the highest it would ever be during Tripp’s years on the BOT.

The six-year graduation rate at FAU went down to 37.9 percent in 2007, the year that Tripp was elected to become chairman of the BOT. It was 39.4 percent in 2008 when Gov. Charlie Crist appointed Tripp to a seat on the BOG.

Tripp was a big supporter of FAU President Frank Brogan despite the fact that six-year graduation was below 40 percent every year that Brogan was in charge from 2003 to 2009. The six-year graduation at FAU also didn’t stop him from giving his enthusiastic support to the possibility of hiring Brogan to become the BOG chancellor.

“He would absolutely be the perfect candidate, exactly what the university system would need,” Tripp said of Brogan in 2009.

Tripp isn’t the least bit qualified to criticize the academic performance of FAMU.