{"id":6412,"date":"2020-02-16T10:51:34","date_gmt":"2020-02-16T15:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=6412"},"modified":"2020-02-16T10:52:27","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T15:52:27","slug":"florida-poly-makes-a-convincing-case-for-its-independence-over-fines-objection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2020\/02\/16\/florida-poly-makes-a-convincing-case-for-its-independence-over-fines-objection\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Poly makes a convincing case for its independence over Fine\u2019s objection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

State Rep. Randy Fine has offered one of the most\nprovocative policy prescriptions for saving Florida taxpayers money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Palm Bay Republican proposes abolishing Florida\nPolytechnic University in Lakeland as an independent member of the State\nUniversity System and making it part of the University of Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fine\u2019s rationale: According to a report by the state Board\nof Governors, it costs $180,958 to produce a graduate at Florida Poly, compared\nto an average of $28,208 for all dozen schools in the public university system.\n\u201cWe have an obligation to taxpayers to generate degrees at the lowest possible\ncost,\u201d Fine recently told Florida Politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We agree with his philosophy. Government, regardless of what\nit does, should operate as efficiently and as cost effectively for taxpayers as\npossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, this is one of the more remarkably bad ideas to come\nout of Tallahassee this legislative session. And we urge Polk County\u2019s\ndelegation, particularly Rep. Josie Tomkow, R-Polk City, and Sen. Kelli\nStargel, R-Lakeland, whose districts include Florida Poly, to lead the charge\nto defeat it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re just looking at numbers on a spreadsheet for\nFlorida Poly, or tiny New College in Sarasota, which awaits a similar fate as a\nfuture satellite of Florida State University, Fine\u2019s plan makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this issue is more nuanced and Florida Poly\u2019s\ncounterargument has not gotten the attention it deserves. Consider, as we did,\npoints Florida Poly spokeswoman Lydia Guzman made in an email to us after we\nasked about this allegedly exorbitant cost:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 The floated \u201ccost per degree\u201d only covers Florida Poly\u2019s\nfirst class, and includes the school\u2019s start-up costs, such as its capital\ninfrastructure, that were settled long ago at schools like UF;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Florida Poly was created as, and is, a niche operation,\nfocusing exclusively on STEM-heavy programs, particularly engineering. Those\nspecialized degrees cost three to six times to produce as popular degrees in\nliberal arts, social sciences, or business that are found in abundance at other\nschools;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Using the school\u2019s current budget and its \u201ctuition\ncollection\u201d forecast, and dividing that by Florida Poly\u2019s projection of\ngraduates, the cost per degree plummets by 45%, compared to the number Fine\nuses;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Florida Poly contends admin costs are not calculated\nconsistently across the university system. For instance, an \u201cadministrative\ncost\u201d at one university may be defined as \u201cinstruction\u201d at another. And Florida\nPoly suffers in this regard because it has centralized all of its\nadministration as one unit, which makes its expenses appear higher, and does\nnot have subordinate \u201ccolleges\u201d for each academic discipline wherein these\ncosts are generally counted as instruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Florida Poly opened in 2014, and methodically and\ndeliberately hires faculty to meet growth of the student population. Currently,\nsome faculty slots remain open, which creates an impression of bloat. The\ncollege argues that once these vacancies are filled, Florida Poly will have 1.8\nstaffers for each faculty member. At UF, the ratio is more than 3 to 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 UF handled Florida Poly\u2019s administrative functions from\n2012, when the Legislature created the school, through 2016. Poly\u2019s leaders\ncontend that if you project those previous costs under UF\u2019s management to its\ncurrent budget, localizing those functions at an independent Florida Poly saves\ntaxpayers nearly $1.5 million a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 Finally, subsuming Florida Poly under UF to save an\n\u201cunsubstantiated\u201d estimate of $5 million, or 0.87% of the state\u2019s higher\neducation budget, could hurt a school that generates more than $290 million in\neconomic activity for the state. We would add that aspect doesn\u2019t include\nPoly\u2019s branding that attracted SunTrax, the Florida Turnpike Authority\u2019s\nproving ground for autonomous vehicle technology, and its future positioning as\nan anchor of a high-tech business district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We cannot speak for New College, which has 724 students,\nwhose enrollment is down 17% from the previous academic year, and which faces a\nsignificant challenge to meet its goal of 1,200 students by fall 2023. We\u2019ll\nleave to its advocates in Sarasota to resist Fine\u2019s encroachment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Florida Poly\u2019s story is different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its enrollment is more than 150% bigger than when it\nlaunched, and according to Guzman, its \u201ccompleted\u201d applications for the 2020\nfreshman class are up 80% over a year ago \u2014 which bucks the national trend of\ndeclining interest in pursuing higher education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, to us, Fine\u2019s plan, which is gaining traction,\nis not so fine. It\u2019s short-sighted, misguided and one-sided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Florida Poly makes a convincing case for its independence.\nWe hope a majority of lawmakers, aided by Polk\u2019s delegation, will listen and\nagree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

State Rep. Randy Fine has offered one of the most provocative policy prescriptions for saving Florida taxpayers money. The Palm Bay Republican proposes abolishing Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland as… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}