Scott Powers
A bill revising Florida’s community college system breezed through a Florida House committee Tuesday, setting up potential negotiations with a similar Florida Senate bill that recently cleared a key committee with some critical differences.
House Bill 929 does little to change anything currently going on in the Florida College System but sets out to establish parameters to prevent the system from evolving from the current formula, which has been winning nation recognition as a model for both workforce-ready education and transfers to state universities.
The bill would emphasize that the primary missions of Florida’s colleges is its 2+2 system for providing college students with their first two years of college toward a four-year bachelor’s degree they can finish at a state university, and its workforce demand-driven associates of science programs and technical certificate programs preparing students for immediate job needs in a community.
The bill consequently sets a cap on how much Florida’s 28 state colleges can offer in four-year bachelor of science degrees, at 20 percent of the statewide system’s student body. It also forbids colleges from offering four-year bachelor of arts degrees. And it calls for a task force to be created and report next fall on whether the colleges should continue to be run by the Florida State Board of Education, or under a new system set up just for colleges.
Those limits would not appear to cause any current concerns, since Florida’s colleges’ bachelor of science programs only account for about 4 percent of the system’s student body, and no Florida state college currently offers any bachelor of arts degrees.
Yet some of the bills provisions, including the 20 percent cap, are divergences from the original bill, changes sponsor Republican state Rep. Jake Rayburn of Valrico said have been made as a result of concerns raised by college officials and others in earlier hearings. And that puts them at odds with the companion Senate Bill 374, which was approved two weeks ago by the Senate Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee, setting the cap at 15 percent of all degrees, and creating a new governing board, the Florida State Board of Community Colleges.
“We are very proud of what our Florida college system does, and the opportunities it provides to Floridians to get a good education, and many times that leads to a good-paying job,” Rayburn said. “The bills originated in the Senate and we are working with our partners in the Senate to come up with a product that is good for the Florida College System.”
Some college officials had bristled with strong opposition at the earlier proposal for a 15 percent cap and some of the other provisions included in an earlier bill, but offered less resistance to the 20 percent cap and some of the other changes discussed Tuesday in the House committee.
“Compared to what we’ve seen, it’s a much better product,” said Marshall Ogletree, interim executive director of the United Faculty of Florida.
Another change included in HB 929, and in the Senate bill, would bring St. Petersburg College under the same degree approval program that is used for the other 27 state colleges. St. Petersburg College was the first in Florida to offer bachelor of science degrees, 16 years ago, and it did so under a separate provision carved out of Florida law. The change, to make the college use the same law the other colleges now rely on, was welcomed by SPC President William Law, who said his college has been asking for an end to the special treatment for years.
“Feel free to take it out,” Law said of the special provision governing his college’s degree approvals. “We don’t need it to do our part.”
