Enough is enough governor!

You left some important facts out of your comments. The proposed increase in tuition cost is not 15% per year. It's 15% per year until Florida reaches the national average. This is estimated to take 7 or 8 years. What does this tell us? ...that current tuition rates at Florida Universities are ridiculously low. I agree with you that education is important. That is exactly why these increases are being proposed. The idea is to bring up the quality of our universities to a much higher standard in order to compete in the future and to produce educated citizens for a changing economy. In order to do this, our schools need more money. Why shouldn't some of that additional money come from the students who will benefit the most from the enhanced quality of their own education? The budgets of our colleges have been viciously slashed over the last two years (I know. I teach at one.), and prospects are for further cuts to come. Colleges are refusing admission to students because they can’t afford to serve them. How is that current situation advantageous to students? It’s not Charlie Crist who wants to raise tuition rates. Over the last couple years, the colleges and universities have been literally begging for permission to raise them, and up until now, he has vetoed every request. If the much-needed money is not going to come from student tuition, where is it going to come from? In our last election, the voters of Florida passed three constitutional amendments that will reduce tax revenues coming into the state. At the state and county level, we voted DOWN the two proposals that would have imposed an increased tax. Apparently, we want more services and don’t want to pay for them. The people have spoken, and the governor and the legislature are stuck with the results (and thus exposes one of the severe flaws in “direct democracy” – but that’s a topic for another day). It’s easy to take shots at Crist, but he’s only dealing with the mess the voters (and a lagging economy) have handed him.

"Enough governor!  give us the tools to succeed, don't take them away from us.  Give us what we need to make this state grow and flourish.  Don't plant your home seeds in somebody else's back yard." By csgorham1

 Sorry, I disagree. The "tools to succeed" do not equate to dollars. The real tools are motivation, determination and the willingness to work for what one wants. Unless of course, if all one wants is taxpayer money, then I suppose you'd be correct.

No one ever "gave" me a damned thing so I worked hard and kept determined to succeed at life, whatever that meant. No, I do not have a Phd nor any degree for that matter, unless one could consider surviving for 57 years on hard work and determination a "degree" in life. Oh, I've had my share of failures, but I never fell down so hard that I couldn't pick myself back up and keep going.

I apologise if I sound so cynical on a day we celebrate Thanksgiving for all of our blessings. I AM Thankful for all of MY blessings, and I've had, and have, many in this life. However, demanding money from government to improve myself has never been one of my faults. There are far too many examples in this world of people that came from literally nothing and worked hard to become some of our most admired and successful citizens. They all did it without the "government" holding their hands or paying their way. I'm sorry, there is no sympathy in me for causes such as this.

  Though I'm only 34, I come from the old school where, like yourself, I've WORKED for all I have.  My generation by and large has been one of excess.  Parents (your generation) have given their kids all the things they never had as kids.  Cars, spending money, paying for their college education.  My generation never had to work for squat!  They considered it a right.  Too good to work at Mickey D's, to good to mow lawns, and so on.  Well, look where THAT got us.  We have illegal lawbreaker doing those jobs now.  I won't go there, though.  I want to touch on the state of the educational system in general.  ALL my family, except for me, are teachers.  Kindergarten, grade school, high school, and a college professor.  The lament these days is that teachers are pressured by the board to basically teach the kids how to pass "THE TESTS!"  You know, all those acronym crap things.  They have no time for actual learning anymore.  No interesting tidbits on American History anymore, no intense geography, (most kids CANNOT name all 50 states, let alone their capitals.  That's what the internet is for)  The parents pressure the board to make the teachers give less home work so they can have more time for sports and vacations and things.  There is just no meaningful learning anymore.  Kids are being sent to college hardly knowing anything of real value.  As we all know, sports rule college Florida!  Colleges aren't turning down the gangbanger that can run the 40 in 3.4 now are they?  Yeah, that guy's a benefit to society.  Maybe he'll go on to play for the Jags and do some coke and get lots of D.U.I.'s.  No, let's turn down the kid that might make something of himself down the road.  No, it's not about money, it's about lost values.  What would happen if God forbid, an apocalypse happened in America?  No power?  No internet?  No Publix's serving us?  How many of us could survive?  The kids learning Linux programming in school?  Nope.  The drug dealing idiot on the Gators?  Nope.  The people who actually learned and retained some of the old lessons,  how to hunt, fish, grow vegetables, cut down trees, split wood, start fires without matches.  That bike, canoe or kayak to places instead of driving.  These are lessons we should be teaching todays' kids before they are lost to history and big eco farms and corporations take over completely providing us food.  Next time you see a farmer on the side of the road selling produce, stop and buy some things.  Yes, it may be a little more than Publix, but it will taste a whole lot better.  That is a graduate of a REAL college, The College of Life.

"...demanding money from government to improve myself has never been one of my faults. There are far too many examples in this world of people that came from literally nothing and worked hard to become some of our most admired and successful citizens. They all did it without the "government" holding their hands or paying their way." Claude91098.

Unfortunately Claude91098, in today's society hard work will only get you so far.  More and more organizations are demanding not only bachelors degrees, but graduate level certifications as well.  Hard work won't take you inside those organizations, and without the degree, they won't even consider your application.  Hard work is not enough.  Today's graduates not only compete at a national level, but compete with an international pool of applicants which makes high skill labor very competitive.  This trend will only continue as companies search for places to reduce cost, and what better than the cheap international labor market.  Someone who comes from literary nothing will have very low probabilities of success in today's world, but then again, that's just my opinion.

With respects to the government holding my hand or paying my way, I will have to disagree.  The government funds about 70% of its budget with people who fall into my income bracket.  I pay for others' people welfare, education, disabilities, and will have to fund the retirement of 70 million baby boomers with a bankrupt treasury.  I don't complain.  This is what society has handed me and I will make sure I pay my taxes to fund social services and allow the baby boomers to retire.  

Improve myself?  Think again.  The more college graduates we have, the more job creation there is, national income average increases, thus the government collects more revenues to fund government.  College graduates bring something called "value added" to society, and while a college degree does help the individual further his or her place in society, it does benefit society in a much larger scale.  40 years in the workforce with an above average income will fund government programs for those who can't afford them.  I don't demand money for me, I demand money for education, and education in the long run could be the solution to social inequality.

Yes, Florida universities are underfunded and  need to cover their expenses somehow, but should we increase college tuition when everyone is loosing their jobs, homes, and worldly possessions? Do we need to increase tuition by 15% every year until it catches up with the national average?  How about a gradual increase when the economy gets red of the flu?  How would you feel about the government if it were to increase its taxes until it catches up with the world average?  For some college students the cost of tuition and books alone takes about half of their yearly income.  Do we need to place such a steep penalty on them for wanting to further themselves and  society?  I think right now it is the wrong time to implement such policies.  We don't increase costs when the economy is contracting (based on basic economic principles).  We are willing to give money away to financial institutions and automakers, but we raise the cost for our students?

Once again Claude91098, this only represents my opinion so please take no offense on my comments. I do appreciate all my blessings and the opportunities this country has given me.  I hold a long run view of the world, and because of that, certain things are very dear to me, one of them being education.  I appreciate the hard work millions of American have put in to make this country the country it is today.  I don't want all that hard work to go to waste, and I believe the only way we can keep what we have is through an educated workforce, which does not translate into a less hardworking workforce.  The demands have changed; thus we need to evolve and move on.

I do not take offense because you completely misunderstood what I meant by "hard work".

I support a college education for everyone that is willing to WORK FOR IT. If that means you have to do HARD WORK to earn enough money to go, which may entail having to NOT go for a while until you CAN PAY, then that is what sacrafice and hard work means to me. Sometimes you just can't go from high school to college, graduate when your 22 or 26 and go into the job market with those degrees. SOMETIMES, folks may have to work for a while, SAVE some $$$, and THEN go to college when they are 20, 22 or 28 even.

I'm sorry, I just don't see how it's the "government's responsibility" to pay for advanced education. We citizens have allowed the government to dominate the "public schools" through grade 12. NOW we are expected to allow our government to take control of the colleges as well? You can see how good of a job they have done with the rest of their efforts in public schools and other areas. Some idiots even advocate the government take control of our health care! Good GOD!!! Spit out the damned kool-aid already!

There are plenty of scholarship programs out there too. But, oh my, you have to WORK at it to get acknowledged and you may have to apply to dozens of them before you are accepted by any, if then. My family has always supported higher education even thogh very few from my father's generation or earlier ever went farther than the 6th grade. They were all farmers kids and were taken out of school to work on the farm. All 12 of them! Their children did make it to college, most of them anyway. As poor as my uncle was, he left a sizable amount to Chowan College in Murfreesboro, NC after he died.

PLease note that I am a Conservative Libertarian Constitutionalist and I strongly advocate a smaller government and less of it's intrusion into our daily lives. Our government should be run by our Constitution as it was intended. NO WHERE in our Constitution will you find provisions for welfare, education, social security, medicare or any of the other "modern day entitlements" that our soceity has become addicted to.

You are SO CORRECT! Today's soceity is nothing like when I or my father endured. However, we THRIVED in those days. No internet, few telephones, no video games, b&w tv if any at all, we grew or killed what we ate or we didn't have it. (Flour, salt etc we got at the small mom/pop store a few miles away. We sold eggs for the $$ to buy that with.) In short, it is NOTHING today like it used to be. WE had a WORK ETHIC and today's soceity is sorely lacking in that regard.

Please, just my opinion...don't be offended by it.