BOCA RATON, Fla.—USF Polytechnic will continue to develop within the USF system until it fulfills a list of criteria and is granted independence after review, the Board of Governors decided Nov. 9.
The decision provided for a transition period while Polytechnic achieves nine standards set forth in the resolution, including independent accreditation, growth to 1,244 full time equivalent students and the completion of primary buildings.
Once the criteria have been met, a process that could take up to a decade, the Board of Governors, the independent body that governs the state university system, will re-address independence.
The debate over splitting from the USF system was defined by two competing visions. The pro-USF system view argued that the Lakeland branch of USF, renamed Polytechnic three years ago, benefits from the buying power, administrative costs, name recognition and accreditation of the USF system. The proponents of independence argued that future STEM-based programming could not flourish within USF and were seeking a hard deadline for independence.
“We are not a barrier, whatsoever,” said USF President Judy Genshaft of the system’s role in developing the campus. Polytechnic had been granted academic autonomy and USF is dedicated to Polytechnic as a center for STEM education, she said. There have been “growing pains, but not barriers.”
Critical of the leadership at Polytechnic, Genshaft said that 14 new degree programs had been approved by the system, but “with all that talk, not one degree program has materialized.”
USF leadership had been publicly agnostic toward Polytechnic independence until only a few days prior to the vote, when it released a critique of the proposed growth plan that would attempt to rapidly transform the small regional university into a specialized institution based on STEM: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“Free from outside influence, we will continue our work,” Genshaft said, hinting toward the political influences behind the push for independence.
Polytechnic Regional Chancellor Marshall Goodman focused his address on the soundness of the university’s development plan that had been recently criticized by the USF board of trustees. Among the criticisms was that Polytechnic had no plan for continued, sustainable funding after five years.
“The next five years is when we have the clearest vision,” Goodman said. With growth of 111 percent in eight years, which he called “conservative growth,” and increased tuition, “our bottom line only gets better.”
Polytechnic requires independence because “it’s tough when you have 40,000 to 50,000 [students] to move from a legacy system to a new model,” he said
Goodman also said that with cloud computing and other cost-saving measures, Polytechnic could manage administrative functions cheaper than through the USF system.
The campus has not been supported under the “stewardship” of the USF system, said Sen. J.D. Alexander, using air quotes for emphasis. “After I got elected I wanted to change that reality.”
“It has been tortuous at every step of the way to get programs implemented,” he said. “I hear the discussion that they do a good job, but I just don’t believe it.”
Alexander, as chair of the Senate budget committee, has been the most powerful supporter of an independent university in his district. He has been vocal in his willingness to use his position as chair of the Senate budget committee to force the issue.
Sen. Don Gaetz, another supporter for an independent Polytechnic, said Alexander had “done the heavy lifting, carried the heavy decisions” during his tenure in state government, and has done more for education than any other elected official.
Gaetz criticized the current state of higher education in the state. “The system is not producing quality workers in the polytech areas,” he said, and 60 percent of the growth jobs in the next decade are technology-related.
He proposed that tuition costs for individual degrees be “lashed” to economic realities. Only 35 percent of psychology, the most common degree awarded, and only 30 percent of political science degree earners are employed, he said, compared to 75 percent for engineering, and at a higher pay rate.
Gaetz also reminded the panel that while Alexander was term-limited, he was all but confirmed as the next Senate president.
As if to address the political “gun behind the door,” board member Michael Long, the elected student representative on the panel, said politics was affecting the board’s decision. He called Alexander out specifically and spoke of a personal meeting between himself and the senator where the senator threatened to cut funding for education if Polytechnic was not granted independence.
Long, a 20-year-old college sophomore at New College in Sarasota, said Alexander was “leveling his power in the legislature” to intimidate the board.
Board member Norman Tripp called Alexander a “champion” for Polytechnic, and said that it would be impossible to remove politics from the equation. Every member of the board was either a political appointment or elected in a political process, he said.
“This document is a piece of crap,” said board member John Temple, referring to the over-500 page growth plan proposed by Polytechnic. Temple said his 22 years of experience in large-scale community development as the CEO of Temple Development Company gave him no confidence in the plan.
The architect chosen to build the new campus has a reputation for being “over budget on every project he’s done” and the proposed costs are “out of control,” Temple said. “The state has no money. We can’t even fix our roofs.”
“The economy will stay weak. If we get money, it will come from other universities,” he said. “The legislature is going around us and running this university. This thing is all screwed up.”
Sen. Mike Fasano wrote a letter to the board that said the state had a $2 billion shortfall to deal with, first, before creating a 12th state university. “This is not the time to authorize a new university anywhere in the state of Florida,” he wrote.
The apparatus necessary to run the university has not been considered, he wrote, and the student base does not exist. “I believe this is being done for all the wrong reasons.”
In another letter of support for the USF system, Sen. Paula Dockery wrote that students, faculty and residents of Polk Country are not supportive of the split, and that politics were behind the independence movement. “Please make your decisions based on merits,” she wrote to the board.
Also in attendance at the meeting were nearly 40 USF students wearing matching green game-day T-shirts with “United as one” written on the front. The students were bused from Tampa with money provided by an anonymous former USF trustee.
Photo by Christopher Guinn
