A profoundly unfair bill would withhold Bright Futures aid based on college majors
Dennis Baxley doesn’t think much of his sociology degree from Florida State.
It was worth “two bucks and a cup of coffee in most towns,” the state senator from Ocala told the Tampa Bay Times. So he got a certification to become a funeral director.
Good for him. We’re glad Baxley discovered a successful career doing something he loves.
But just because sociology didn’t work out for Baxley doesn’t mean other people who chose it as a college major haven’t found success.
Nor does it justify the state of Florida punishing college students financially for choosing majors like sociology as a field of study.
Punishing college students is exactly what a bill Baxley has introduced in the Legislature would do, and it appears to have the support of the House speaker and the Senate president, which exponentially increases the bill’s chances of getting passed.
Senate bill 86 would force the state Board of Education and Board of Governors to create a list of degree programs whose graduates will be in high demand in the workplace.
Students who choose a degree program that’s included on the list of sanctioned majors would remain eligible for full financial aid from the state.
Student’s who don’t would be limited to 60 credit hours of financial aid, half the number of hours it typically takes to get a bachelor’s degree.
That includes limiting how much money students could receive from the popular, Lottery-funded Bright Futures program to pay for tuition and fees.
It’ll basically be a big, fat tuition increase for students who choose the wrong major.
You’re reading correctly — the GOP-led Legislature wants the government to pick winners and losers based on someone’s major in college.
And here we thought Republicans didn’t like the government picking winners and losers.
If this has a familiar ring, it should. It’s a rotten, recycled idea along the lines of what Gov. Rick Scott suggested a decade ago, except he used anthropology as a punching bag.
“We’re spending a lot of money on education, and when you look at the results, it’s not great,” Scott said in 2011. “Do you want to use your tax money to educate more people who can’t get jobs in anthropology? I don’t.”
(It turned out Scott’s daughter had a degree in anthropology from the College of William and Mary.)
Florida has no business telling college students what they ought or ought not study, which for all practical purposes is what Baxley’s bill would do by denying financial aid to a certain class of student.
Does Florida really want a financial caste system for colleges and universities, with engineering, bio-med and computer science students at the top of the heap, while theater, history and sociology students languish at the bottom?
Dennis Baxley may have decided sociology wasn’t a career path for him, but others who majored in the study of human behavior found it served them well.
Martin Luther King Jr. majored in sociology at Morehouse College, a useful degree as he struggled to change the way America thought about equality.
Ronald Reagan, Michelle Obama and Shirley Chisholm also majored in sociology. They went on to other things but their study of why people behave as they do wasn’t wasted.
We’ve lost sight of the value and reward of higher education when the only metrics that matter are the ease of getting a job and how much it pays. Florida’s colleges and universities shouldn’t be turned into glorified trade schools.
We wonder, too, if supporters of this bill have considered the consequences for students who don’t choose a major that’s eligible for full financial aid.
Too many college students already face the crushing burden of student loan debt. Baxley’s bill would only exacerbate that problem for students who don’t choose majors deemed worthy of financial support from the state of Florida, discouraging some underprivileged students from attending college at all.
Plus, in many instances Black and Hispanic students are more likely than white students to enter fields like social sciences and humanities, which Baxley’s bill probably would target for cuts in aid. Black and Hispanic students are less likely than their white peers to enter fields like engineering and physical sciences, which probably would be protected from aid cuts by Baxley’s bill.
We need less financial and racial disparity in higher education, not more.
If the state wants to steer students toward majors that produce more lucrative careers it ought to try using the carrot rather than the stick.
This bill deserves a failing grade from Florida’s lawmakers.
Editorials are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board and are written by one of its members or a designee. The editorial board consists of Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, Jennifer A. Marcial Ocasio, Jay Reddick and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Send emails to insight@orlan dosentinel.com.