A Florida House committee Monday endorsed its version of a higher-education reform bill, including expanding Bright Futures scholarships and requiring state universities to begin using “block” tuition.
The bill (HB 3), sponsored by Rep. Bryan Avila, R-Hialeah, is the House’s answer to Senate President Joe Negron’s effort (SB 2) to elevate Florida’s higher-education system by increasing scholarship opportunities, tightening performance standards for state colleges and universities and encouraging more students to graduate on time. The Senate bill passed 35-1 in the first week of the legislative session.
The House and Senate bills are similar, but the House is taking a different direction on some issues.
Both bills would expand the Bright Futures award for “academic scholars” to cover full tuition and fees for students who qualify for the merit-based aid. It would also provide $300 for the fall and spring semesters for textbooks and other costs.
The Senate would expand the scholarship for “academic scholars” to the summer semester, while Avila said the House wants to expand summer support to all Bright Future recipients, including “medallion scholars” and “gold seal vocational scholars.”
While agreeing with the Senate that the 12 state universities should have block tuition in place by the fall of 2018, the House would require “at a minimum” that the plans allow students to pay no tuition or fees for classes exceeding 15 credit hours per semester. The other details of the tuition plan, which would replace the current per-credit hour charge with a flat per-semester fee, would have to be worked out by the individual universities.
The House bill, which was approved in an 11-3 vote by the Post-Secondary Education Subcommittee, would be a little more lenient in its graduation-rate performance standards for state colleges and universities.
The House would measure state colleges by graduating full-time students who finish their degrees or certificate programs within 150 percent of the normal completion time, which would be three years for a two-year associate degree. The colleges would get extra credit for students who complete their programs within 100 percent of the normal time, which is closer to the Senate standard.
The Senate wants to measure university undergraduate programs on a four-year graduation basis. The House also would use a four-year measure, but would add a six-year measure with weighting for four-year graduations.
The House bill leaves out several programs in the Senate legislation, including a plan to reward top-performing graduate programs, a scholarship program for students from farm-worker families and a plan to expand a tuition-free program for national merit scholars to out-of-state students.