Although the legislature did not make the radical changes in Bright Futures Scholarships, it still indulged histrionic anti-intellectualism (DeSANTIS' base). This was mean and base. Best lede I've read in a while -- Florida has California problems with an Alabama legislature. I've filed as a Democratic candidate to run for that legislature, as a transformative act to hold Tallahassee accountable.
From Forbes:
Only In Florida, Senator Wants To Limit College Scholarships
Florida is state with California challenges, run by an Alabama legislature.
That line is legendarily attributed to Dave Berry, the columnist, comedian and author. I worked in the Florida Legislature many times and can attest to its accuracy. Even so, I mostly stopped using the line because it’s mean to Alabama for no good reason.
The Florida Legislature did, after all, ban sex at one point. If you have not heard the story of this accomplishment, back in 2011, on their third attempt no less, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 344, which made it illegal to “knowingly engage in any sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal.”
Now, overlooking that as late as 2011, sex with animals was legal in Florida, or that it took the Legislature three tries to outlaw it, or that the law only bans those acts when you do them “knowingly” - which raises infinitely more questions than it answers - Florida’s brain trust apparently did not realize that humans are animals.
No big deal though, as the law just made it illegal to do sex “knowingly.”
Another time, I remember a Florida Senator who insisted that General Revenue appear before her committee to answer questions about the state budget. His name was all over the document, she said, yet she’d never actually met the man. How rude.
Not wanting to be left behind, another Florida Senator is apparently eager to get his entry into dumbest idea from Florida contest. It’s a tough competition, but - spoiler alert - this one has a chance to go all the way.
Florida has a “Bright Futures” scholarship program that was designed around simple premise - if Florida high school students stay out of trouble, get good grades and are accepted to an accredited Florida college or university, the state will pay for a nice chunk of their college education. The Legislature has made the program unnecessarily complicated. Still, over the past 25 years, Florida has spent around $6.8 billion to send about 880,000 students to college.
Not so fast, though. Now, Republican Senator Bill Baxley has filed a bill to limit Bright Futures scholarships only to majors and programs “which lead directly to employment.”
And there’s your winner. Not even banning sex was this short sighted.
First, there’s the obvious problem in that Baxley wants to turn an open scholarship into a limited vocational training program, obliterating its intent and a significant incentive for Florida’s best and brightest students to stay in Florida for college. Facing a certain drought in college students, giving tens of thousands of incoming college students any reason to look elsewhere is a Sunshine State Special.
Then there’s also the problem of who will decide what college programs “lead directly to employment” and exactly what Cassadaga-level tarot card reading that will require.
The Baxley bill says the state will make a list of the “directly to employment” college programs based on “national, state, and regional industry demand” as well as “occupations, current job openings, estimates of job growth, and employment wages.”
Good as that may sound, Florida can’t possibly know what the “good jobs” will be years from now. No one can. If you’re trying to fill a job five or six years from now, using today’s help wanted ads seems like a foolish approach. But, again, this is Florida. Foolish is Florida’s largest export.
Since the Baxley plan is little more than a bad idea at this point, we can’t know for sure what types of college programs will make Florida’s good list and what students won’t be able to learn with the scholarship funds they were promised. Nonetheless, being that this is Florida, it feels highly likely that the state will ignore the evidence and put things such as computer coding and blockchain on their “good” list while casting aside liberal arts options such as English, history or sociology.
That’s what you’d expect Florida to do because there’s ample evidence that students who study liberal arts subjects make more money and have better jobs over the long term. True, studying the STEM fields will get you off to a faster career start but the benefits will fade over time. Moreover, employers and recruiters have said loudly and consistently that the most valued jobs skills are those related to mindset, and learning and communication - the things you learn by studying things like psychology and sociology.
For the record, Baxley, who did not respond to an interview request, earned his liberal arts degree in psychology and sociology.
Worse still, according to his bill, the list of things the state will let you study with your earned scholarship money will be updated every year. That means that a student could enter college with a Bright Futures Scholarship and agree to study one of the state-blessed subjects, only to see it un-blessed when the economic, or technology or political winds change. What then? Drop out? Throw the previous investment away and start over in a newly approved subject? Take student loans to finish?
Any state policy that could lead more students to leave the state, drop out, switch majors or take on student debt is a bad one. But this idea isn’t about what’s good for students or the state.
Baxley is most likely just being political, following other politicians trying to poke at liberal arts and book learning, trying to get the state out of the business of making better, smarter citizens, trying to turn education into cold, crass, cash calculus. By being equal parts cynical and short sighted this Baxley bill is so perfectly (cheff’s-kiss) Florida.
How to pay for kids to go to college is a California-level challenge. Perhaps surprisingly, Florida has done a decent job of that recently. But not even Alabama’s state scholarship program limits awards based on what a student wants to study. So, naturally, the Florida Senate wants to.
I write about education including education technology (edtech) and higher education. I've written about these topics and others in a variety of outlets including The Washington Post, The Atlantic and Quartz. I served as vice-president at The Century Foundation, a public policy think tank with an emphasis on education and worked for an international education nonprofit teaching entrepreneurship. I also served as a speech writer for a governor of Florida, worked in the Florida legislature and attended Columbia University in New York City. I'm a member of the Education Writers Association.
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