Best of 2015: Political Ideology is Driving SCF

Last week, State College of Florida’s board of trustees made an unexplained and utterly inexplicable decision to enact a policy that is certain to decrease the quality of instructors it attracts. The policy and the way it was enacted are emblematic of an ideological battle for influence over American education at all levels.

SCF did not have tenure, which is usually a university-level benefit, but rather a status where an instructor, after meeting rigorous standards, could attain "continuous contracting,“ providing them with important protection of due process requirements that would make sure that a fair and judicial process be followed in any effort to terminate their employment. In education, this is particularly important, as so to be able to attract the best employees who do not have to fear being cast off for no reason each time there is a shift in the political winds of a board or administration.

The college is one of 28 in our state’s system of public colleges, which consists of former community colleges that have transitioned into a role between junior college and full-fledged university by offering a limited number of four-year degree programs in addition to their functions as a provider of 2-year degrees and supplier of transfer students to other universities.

The school has been a success story and an important economic driver in our community. Its students who matriculate to state universities routinely perform better in years three and four than those who initially enroll directly at those institutions. It also educates a large number of local citizens who then go on to work in our community, helping to create a more dynamic economy that all residents (and especially business owners) benefit from.

Their continuous contracts systems was recognized as a model for other schools to aspire to and actually inspired a change in the state’s procedures for other schools. You’re probably wondering what the perceived problem was that the board of governors sought to remedy.

The most obvious downside to the policy is that the school will now have to compete with the other 27 state colleges who offer their instructors this vital security to their employment. The school routinely recruits nationally for its instructors but will now have to ask prospects from outside the area to relocate, perhaps uproot an entire family, and come to Florida for a job that may or may not be there from one year to the next without the hope of attaining a more permanent status. Good luck with that.

It will also have to market itself to prospective students and their families as the right place to invest a not inconsiderable amount of money on an education with the possible perception that their treatment of instructors is not likely to leave them with the cream of the crop in the field. These are not exactly selling points for a policy that no one seemed to know the college needed and no one on the board has bothered to explain beyond the tired promise of "running things more like a business.“

So, what could be the motive? Let’s first look at the board, which is appointed by the governor. The timing of appointment expirations at SCF have allowed Governor Scott to appoint a majority of the trustees. Not surprisingly, it reads as something of a who’s who of local Republican politics.

Even less surprisingly, the new policy was proposed by Medallion Homes owner Carlos Beruff, who most recently drew heat for using his position as a member on our regional water district’s board to lead a vote to ignore an administrative law judge’s recommended order and allow fellow developer Pat Neal to destroy high-quality wetlands on Perico Island in order to build a "family compound“ of four 10,000 square foot mansions.

Beruff stepped down from the SWFMD board following the vote, but also serves on the governor’s recently convened Commission on Healthcare and Hospital Funding, a field where he likewise lacks experience or expertise. Neal’s wife also serves on the board, as does former Sarasota Republican Party chair Eric Robinson. There are a number of other prominent Republicans, former political candidates and developers among the nine trustees. Suffice it to say, it’s a Rick Scott stronghold.

On the far right, it’s been a long-time desire to do something about the so-called liberal education system that conservatives claim indoctrinates young Americans into a pro-Democrat, even pro-socialist agenda. Conservatives fear that without influence over the ideas that take root through learning, there would not be enough exposure of conservative theory and principles to young minds. With a perception that liberals dominate the ranks of professors, the obvious tactic was to target administrations and funding.

In recent years, there has been a strong effort by conservative donors like the Koch brothers and right-wing think tanks to exercise more influence by funding schools with the caveat that certain conditions must be met in terms of curriculum. The Kochs' string-attached endowment at FSU was the most famous example here in Florida. Some were even more strange, like former BB&T boss John Allison’s requirement to the 60 schools he’d endowed that the decidedly non-academic book "Atlas Shrugged“ by Ayn Rand be enthusiastically taught, and there has been a great deal of success in influence over the economics departments of the higher education system in the U.S.

By exercising control over the administration–Beruff famously forced out former Democratic state rep. Lars Hafner as SCF’s president in 2012–and taking away any form of tenure, shifting toward an increasing dependence on part-time, ad-hoc professors, the board becomes much more influential over what goes on at the college. That’s good for the ideological mission, so to speak, but bad for the colleges, the students and the taxpayers.

Stacking boards with political cronies, most of whom have no discernible level of expertise but are reliable agents of his political ideology, has been Scott’s M.O. from the start. My guess is that as soon as more boards have a similar make-up, those forces will try to make this the new norm at all of the state’s colleges, watering down something that has recently been so impressively built up.

Your job isn’t guaranteed for life, so why should theirs be? they argue without any basis. This is about making schools accountable. They need to be run more like businesses.

For SCF, many fear that the end result will likely be a transition from model institution to a haven for hacks and disinterested part-timers who don’t produce the sort of students the school can currently boast, which means they are less likely to draw the sort of high-quality prospects they currently get. In economics, that’s called the death spiral. In education, it ought to be called something worse.