Saturday, March 20, 2021

St. Augustine's Stiff-Necked Florida State Senator Travis Hutson Wants to Pick Your College Major Based on "ROI"



St. Augustine, Florida State Senator Travis Hutson (R-HUTSON COMPANIES), in photo at left, wants to pick your college major based on"Return on Investment," or "ROI."  He supports radical alterations in Bright Futures Scholarships, metastasizing them from merit-based to something materialistic and manipulative. 

What a control freak.  How stiff-necked.  What a freaking control freak. 

What strumpet Trumpery from a hick hack hopelessly provincial would-be dictator.

Even State Representative Cyndi Stevenson won't go along with this nasty nostrum  

"I don't think we should be dictating it, if it [the legislation] would be too restrictive," she said. 

See St. Augustine Record article, here

Extremist Hutson Companies scion and its privileged Vice President, Senator Travis Hutson, told The St. Augustine Record's Colleen Michele Jones, "'I do believe that making sure students have the best [career]  outcomes as possible is a good thing, rather than going after some hodgepodge type of major or independent study that doesn't have proven job prospects.' Hutson said."   

The Record reported: "'As far as which degrees would not be approved for the full aid package, Hutson said, 'That is clearly a conversation that the colleges and universities need to have, so we're working on this." "Hutson added that he believed the goal of the legislation was twofold: to provide fiscal accountability in the state making a bankable investment in students' futures; and to save students some heartache down the line by earning a degree with a better ROI in the job market."

Using Jim Crow legal lingo, Hutson said current students would be :"grandfathered."

St. Johns River State College President Joe Hill Pickens, a  UF-educated lawyer and former Republican state representative, did not speak out for his students, but for Hutson's imperial decree.

President Pickens sounds like a louche lapdog, not a watchdog.  He should defend his students' rights to Bright Futures Scholarships based on merit, undiluted by some porcine politicians' pitiful pretensions about presuming to influence picking majors based on "ROI."

Using Southern plantation argot, arrogant Pickens called legislators the "overseers" and said it was "their right" to regulate which majors receive funding.

"Rights" belong to the governed, not the government.

Legislators have responsibilities to comply with the Constitution. 

People have rights under the First, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Ninth Amendment protects "rights retained by the people.'  Those rights include the right to wear a hat, put cream in your coffee, or study Journalism, Art History, English Literature,  or other fields that this flaky fake State Senator disdains.

We'll just see about that.  Academic freedom is imperiled if legislators try to force impressionable young minds to pick majors based upon an algorithm, based upon materialism, valuing income-earning ability uber alles.

The Record reported, "As overseers and creators of the [Bright Futures] program, it's certainly within the state Legislature's purview to make adjustments to the program, and if they are designing these changes to influence behavior that they believe is in the best interest of Florida residents, then it's their right," said Pickens, who served as a state representative to Putnam County and outlying areas from 2000 to 2008.

What a puny, anti-intellectual pair of  authoritarians.

Communist and authoritarian countries decide which students can pick which majors.

That's not America.

The primary purpose of education in our democracy is teaching critical thinking skills, not money-making.  Anyone who says otherwise is a Philistine.

What rough beast proposes such capitalistic cant?

Crass and materialistic, authoritarian Dull Republican State Senator Travis Hutson chairs the Regulated Industries Committee. He;'s a corporate lapdog, He is in no position to dictate our college majors, any more than he is to dictate that local governments can't  ban plastic bags, subject if Gov, DeSantis's first veto, or to dictate that local governments can't regulate gasoline station zoning (another current bill in the 2021 legislative hopper).

Travis Hutson is the ungracious, undereducated privileged son of a privileged billionaire developer who often gets his way in St. Johns County. 

Senator Travis Hutson attended private Lafayette College, earning a bacherlor[s degree in economics.  

State Senator Travis Hutson thinks he's so smart he he should become Republican Lord of All He Surveys, Governor perhaps, engaging in radical government restructuring to adopt the radical agenda of KOCH INDUSTRIES and other fascists.

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