Gabrielle Russon
The Senate wants to spend $300,000 on a controversial intellectual freedom survey of higher ed students and faculty that has seen low participation previously.
That line item was one of the projects listed in the Senate’s sprinkle list. The sprinkle list, as its name suggests, is an assortment of supplemental funding initiatives the Legislature compiles as budgeting processes near closure to provide typically small apportionments (compared to other earmarks) to regional projects.
The Senate is proposing spending $150,000 for the survey for Florida’s public university system and another $150,000 for the Florida state college system.
In 2021, lawmakers passed legislation to start doing annual voluntary questionnaires to understand students’ and employees’ viewpoints via the 20-plus question survey. In 2024, the survey doubled to 52 questions.
Some faculty groups protested the surveys and urged professors not to fill them out.
“Of the more than 1.36 million individuals who received the student survey, 7,213 responded, representing a total response rate of 0.5 percent,” read a 2022 report by the Florida Department of Education (FDOE).
The universities had a better response. A survey emailed to 338,000 students brought in 49,132 responses, or a 14.5% response rate, a 2024 report said.
Some students said they found the questions inappropriate, like when students were asked last year if they would be friends with someone depending on whether they voted for Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
“The fact that they actually named the Presidents — it really rubbed me the wrong way,” said Noah Barguez-Arias, a University of Florida student who called the survey “slimy,” according to a Fresh Take Florida story last year. “I feel like the universities just shouldn’t really worry about that.”
The GOP has targeted higher education and fought back against what Republican lawmakers call “woke” ideology.
“The two survey instruments were designed to assess the extent to which students and employees feel free to express their beliefs and viewpoints on campus and competing ideas are presented on campus,” FDOE said on its website.
One comment
John
June 13, 2025 at 5:51 pm
As a visiting student at the University of Florida, I endured the most extreme persecution imaginable, which truly gave me a sense of what terrorism looks like in our world today. Because of this firsthand experience, and without waiting for any survey, I know that this university must be defunded.