Preparing to make public universities a priority during the next two years, incoming Senate President Joe Negron says more and better scholarships will help take Florida’s higher-education system to the next level.
The Stuart Republican has made clear his goal of finding an additional $1 billion for the 12 public universities during his two-year term as president, which is slated to begin after the November elections.
Part of that money would go to increasing need-based and merit-based scholarships. Negron is particularly interested in raising the top award for the merit-based Bright Futures scholarships, which were slashed as a result of the recession.
Negron wants to restore the top tier of Bright Futures, known as the Academic Scholars award, to 100 percent of tuition plus $300 per semester for books. That’s what the award covered before the cuts. Now it covers about half the cost of tuition.
“I think people generally understood that during the economic downturn, some reductions in state-government spending had to be made,” Negron said. “But now that the economy is recovering, the response I’ve gotten from students and their parents has been very positive.”
The scholarship program has been popular since it began in 1997. Funded by the Florida Lottery, Bright Futures cost roughly $70 million for 42,319 students during the 1997-98 school year, according to the state Department of Education and the Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research.
That amount shot up to $429 million for 169,366 students by 2008-09, as the recession was gathering steam.
Soon, the Legislature cut the value of the scholarships and reduced the number of awards by hiking standards.
As a result, fewer students qualified for awards. By 2014-15, the state spent $257 million on Bright Futures for 128,545 students — a decrease of 40 percent since 2008-09.
For the 2015-16 school year, the Office of Economic and Demographic Research expects the state to spend $238 million on 112,377 students. For 2016-17, the projection is $217 million for 100,170 students.
Negron has no plans to reduce the requirements for the Academic Scholars awards, which include a weighted 3.5 grade-point average.