Rubio just doesn't get it. He still thinks it's about football. I bet you he never even considered that the university system in Florida is anything beyond UF. Basically all these quips have shown that he lacks a bigger vision.
The historic UF-centric policy has resulted in Florida having a really crappy university system that is the envy of no one. It has been a complete failure.
Some of you may recall that about 15 years ago non-UF'ers spearheaded the abolition of the old statewide Board of Regents. This was done, in part, because UF alumni have such a sordid history of being horrible stewards of the Florida statewide university system through its stranglehold on the old statewide Board of Regents. The non-UF'ers won. The old system was scrapped. However, U.S. Senator Bob Graham, an ardent UF supporter, in an effort to protect UF's monopoly on research-intensive academic programs, championed the 2002 Florida Constitutional Amendment that formed the current Florida Board of Governors. The constitutional amendment contains the UF "avoiding wasteful duplication of facilities or programs" protectionism language was put into the constitutional amendment.
The historic UF strategy is clear: Give all the resources and important academic programs to UF and then shut the door to any other university under the guise of wasteful duplication of facilities or programs.
Here is an interesting article about the historic power struggles of the Statewide University System:
http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3395&context=etd
From page 79:
"The reason that E.T. York and Bob Graham and all these guys hated what happened [seamless policy articulated in the Education Governance Reorganization Act] was that they were scared to death to think their beloved University of Florida was going to be dissipated in terms of their political power, which they were able to enhance and elongate through the Board of Regents process. If you are based in Gainesville with three Democratic legislators, your political base is suspect. They understood that, and they got that. If you don’t understand that in the context of this struggle, I think you are missing something. The entire opposition to boards of trustees almost…look at Bob Graham and E.T. York. They are all at the University of Florida. Very, very few people from FAU
[Florida Atlantic University] or UNF [University of North Florida] give a hoot about this…It was all emanated out of ‘Gatorville.’"
Anyway, the underlying problems is that our state has never adequately funded any our state universities other than UF. And Florida law prevents the individual universities from setting their own tuition. As a result, each school must go begging each to the state legislature and governorfor a handout.
- at least until it is time to vote.
