Florida Lawmakers Considering Bill to Restrict Funding for Some ‘Woke’ Majors
“would restrict the state’s Bright Futures Scholarship dollars to students who choose a college major from a list of approved programs of study”
The idea here is that scholarship funding shouldn’t go to majors that don’t lead to paying jobs. If this was a national policy, the higher ed bubble would be a heck of a lot smaller.
Campus Reform reports:
‘Woke’ majors could be in trouble under Florida bill
Florida students who choose “woke” majors that lack workforce applications may be facing higher tuition bills, pending the outcome of a bill currently in the state Senate.
The bill would restrict the state’s Bright Futures Scholarship dollars to students who choose a college major from a list of approved programs of study dictated by the Board of Governors and Board of Education. The bill passed the Senate Education Committee on March 16 and is now headed to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Education, which is set to consider the proposal next week.
In the bill’s first iteration, students whose fields of study are not on the approved list would have their scholarships limited to a maximum of 60 credit hours, or around half of a typical four-year degree. But WKMG-TV reported that the Senate has revised the bill so that scholarships for disfavored majors wouldn’t be cut, just decreased by a set amount per student.
The Board of Governors and State Board of Education would be required to publish annually a list of “career certificate and undergraduate and graduate degree programs that they determine lead directly to employment.” Students in those programs who meet the scholarship requirements would continue to receive state scholarship dollars, but students in other programs would not enjoy the same access to that pool of funding.
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Comments
Both universities and the governments that fund them have long since forgotten what the purpose of a university is.
Which is?
Read it here. It’s historic, but somewhat too long to repost here.
My nightmare would be one of my children graduating from college with a $200K debt and a degree in “gender studies.”
Such a major would prepare her to tell young women what pigs their husbands are while asking “Do you want fries with that?”
Perhaps this will prevent some of the woke New Yorkers from moving to Florida.
This should be done with financial aid generally. Underwrite the loans privately, at least in part. If a private lender won’t fund your gender studies degree, then you’re out of luck. If you’re an engineering major in good standing, lenders will be happy to lend to you. This is how you fix the financial aid problem.
It’s not my idea. Trump proposed it in 2016 in a campaign speech, his only one in Canada. But then I guess DeVos thought it was impractical; there are some legal problems.
On further reflection, I think this legislation is a huge mistake. The problem I think they are trying to fix is the takeover of the humanities and social sciences by leftist ideology. Banning CRT is one solution, but the problem is like a large balloon: you can punch it in one place, but it will bulge out somewhere else.
It might work to implement “humanities and social sciences choice” by eliminating them from state schools while retaining engineering and the hard sciences. Students (and their parents) could choose an education by worldview.
Another possibility is to require a core curriculum in Western Civilization. But this could be seen as government religious indoctrination, as it quite likely is. But of course, the current state of the humanities and social sciences are definitely government religious indoctrination. Better to get government out of the religious indoctrination business altogether.
As much as I revere Thomas Jefferson, I consider his dedication to public (not general, but government-funded) education unfortunate.
To paraphrase Sam Sorbo, “Catholic schools teach the Catholic faith, Jewish schools teach Judaism, Muslim schools teach Islam… and government schools teach statism.”
Wow! I suspect very few know about this statist aspect of Jefferson! I learned about it from “Disestablishment a Second Time” (Skillen, ed.).
Jefferson’s concern with making sure that citizens were continually reminded of the virtues of our democratic republic (with emphasis on “republic”) was entirely valid. However in his proposed solution of education by government he abandoned everything he knew about human nature and government. It took over 100 years for his “dream” to be implemented. If he could see the result he would repent in dust and ashes.
“and government schools teach statism” Yes, the myth of religious neutrality.
https://blogs.cornell.edu/envirobaer/publications/why-a-functional-definition-of-religion-is-necessary-if-justice-is-to-be-achieved-in-public-education/