by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The University of North Florida will buck a statewide trend of adding new graduate programs and instead use shrinking State funding to enhance its most competitive areas of study, UNF President John Delaney said this week.
During two terms as mayor, Delaney pinpointed what he saw as the City’s unique strengths and honed them to stand apart nationally. His Preservation Project made Jacksonville’s parks system the country’s largest and he convinced voters to fund the $1.5 billion Better Jacksonville Plan to improve the City’s infrastructure.
Speaking after his Monday address the the Meninak Club, Delaney said he’ll employ a similar strategy at UNF, enhancing its nationally renowned Jazz and accounting programs among others to make them nationally competitive.
“My staff and I jokingly refer to it as the Better UNF Plan,” said Delaney. “My focus with the City was to take the good and make it great.
“Now we’re in the process of figuring out what do we have that, for modest amounts of money, we can make great?”
During his speech, Delaney said his school’s Jazz and accounting programs drew national attention to UNF. With enhanced funding, the programs would establish the school as a destination for those pursuing those fields of study. Delaney said he wanted to enhance 5 to 10 UNF programs, setting them apart from similar programs statewide.
Delaney called his strategy “sneaking up on Harvard,” and it’s a far cry from the course some State schools have chosen.
Following Gov. Jeb Bush’s decision two years ago to replace State oversight of State universities with local boards of regents, some schools like Florida State and Florida International began pursuing graduate programs, which placed them in direct competition with other Florida schools.
Delaney said the return to local control “was unquestionably a benefit to State universities.” But he said schools adding duplicate programs was an unfortunate side effect.
For instance, FSU chose to spend $10 million to add a medical school, taking away resources from its other programs and forcing the State to fund multiple medical programs.
“FSU will spend $10 million just in the first year to fund its medical school instead of putting $1 million into 10 programs and making them among the top programs in the country,” Delaney said.
Further muddling the picture, Delaney said FIU and University of Central Florida want to follow in FSU’s footsteps. Both have plans to add medical schools, a move Delaney called “clearly insane.”
The wave of duplicate programs comes at a time when the State can least afford it, said Delaney. The State has spent less on its colleges for the last two years.
It has largely fallen on students to make up the difference. Although in–state tuition is still comparably low – Florida ranks 49th in tuition cost – Delaney said it has risen 7 percent per year for the last two years as funding as been cut.
“Already the cost is shifting to the student,” said Delaney.
Delaney said he “was the only president in the State” who favored keeping tuition low.
“There’s a lot of kids that are barely making it. For every percentage raise in tuition, you’re pricing a percentage of kids out of college. I favor keeping accessibility high.”