How Florida Universities Became World-Class

Florida is a national leader in higher education, with universities that focus intently on success—and achieve it. Surprised? That’s understandable. Florida is known for many things—theme parks, retirement communities, deer-eating pythons—but academic excellence is typically not one of them. The state boasts no prestigious Ivy League–like schools. To the extent that it has a collegiate reputation, it is as a mecca for out-of-state students who come to get blotto during spring break.

Yet, the numbers don’t lie. In the Washington Monthly’s 2025 Best Colleges for Your Tuition (and Tax) Dollars, seven Florida universities rank in the top 100 (out of more than 1,400 schools). These include Florida International University (number eight), University of Central Florida (17), and New College (25), all of them public institutions. Four Florida state universities also make the Monthly’s 2025 Best Colleges for Research ranking, including the University of Florida (number 27) and Florida State (76). And 10 of the top 20 colleges on the Monthly’s Best Bang for the Buck ranking for the Southeast are in Florida.

Why do so many Florida universities do so well on the magazine’s rankings? Part of it is that Florida is a populous state with lots of universities. But Michigan and Pennsylvania have about the same combined population as Florida (23 million). Yet only two Pennsylvania colleges, both private—Haverford (19) and Swarthmore (37)—make the top 100 in the Monthly’s Best Colleges for Your Tuition (and Tax) Dollars, and none from Michigan do.

You might also wonder if Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s famously aggressive crackdown on faculty and curriculum he deems “woke” has anything to do with the state’s high rankings. The answer is no. Florida universities did well on the Monthly’s rankings years before DeSantis was elected governor, and the data underlying the 2025 rankings comes largely from actions before his tenure.

The real explanation for Florida’s stellar performance is the way the state has traditionally governed its public higher education system. Like other states whose universities are disproportionately represented at the top of the Monthly’s rankings—including California, North Carolina, Texas, and New York—Florida has a long history of centralized state control of its public colleges and universities and an abiding commitment to keeping tuition low, especially for in-state students of modest means. By organizing around a governing board, Florida leaders have standardized policies and practices across all universities which set the conditions for students to excel, give presidents the ability to lead difficult change without fear of campus retribution, and most importantly, empower every university in the system to provide the state’s citizens with a high-quality experience.

I’ve seen these measures firsthand, as a student from a low-income family who graduated from the University of Florida debt-free and later as a senior administrator in the Florida higher education system. I think that other states have a lot to learn from how we do things in Florida, especially at a time when many Americans believe education after high school is no longer affordable, accessible, or equitable and aren’t sure of a degree’s value in the workforce. But these lessons come with a warning: The same centralized governance system that has helped Florida higher education leaders serve students so well is also the means by which Florida politicians are imposing a conservative ideological agenda in the classroom.

Florida’s tradition of strong state control of institutions of higher learning goes back more than a century. In 1905, state lawmakers, concerned that a proliferation of colleges was putting a financial drain on the state, cut the number in half and placed them under the thumb of the Florida Board of Control, whose members were appointed by the governor. In the post–World War II years, as college access expanded nationwide, Florida opened dozens of new four-year and two-year campuses. Then, in 1965, the state put the universities under the authority of a new entity, the Board of Regents, which had even greater powers to organize the emerging system.

Under a comprehensive plan in 1969, each institution was given a particular role to play within the larger system. For example, Florida Atlantic University was envisioned to be “a general purpose university established to serve the students in its region. Its unique role in the University System, however, is to experiment with new and innovative instructional media and technology.” In the late 1960s, just on the other side of I-95 from FAU, IBM began building a complex on 550 acres. From the sky one sees the clear, symbiotic relationship between industry and education. 

At roughly the same time, Florida instituted a reform that would profoundly enhance the ability of students to earn four-year degrees while saving money. Dubbed the 2+2 system, it was intended to help students attend lower-cost Florida community colleges for two years and then transfer to bachelor’s degree–granting institutions without losing credits along the way. It did so by, among other things, imposing a common statewide course-numbering system. In practice this meant that the same course—say English (ENC 1101)—counted as credit toward every degree in every two- and four-year public college and university in the state. This deprived four-year universities of revenue they got from demanding that students repeat courses they had taken in community college, and it kept costs down for students and taxpayers. Florida today has one of the highest percentages of its undergraduates in community college and is one of eight states with the highest percentage of community college students who transfer to four-year universities.

The centralized system reduced costs and enhanced student achievement in other ways. When several state universities asked for permission to open law schools—a costly but prestige-enhancing undertaking—the Board of Regents said no, based on a study showing that the state’s need for attorneys was being met by existing Florida law schools and lawyers trained in other states who were moving to Florida and passing the state bar exam. In 1972, the board implemented a process for ending any academic program enrolling too few students to make it viable—decades ahead of similar efforts like those at West Virginia University. The net result was programs merging with other programs or being canceled.

The board also cracked down on the practice of universities requiring students to take more courses than necessary for their degree by placing a maximum on the number of credits it would provide state support for an academic program. This action also reduced institutional revenues but helped more students graduate, more quickly—and therefore at less cost.

Over time, the state adopted other mechanisms that reduced tuition and fees received by the universities but helped keep costs down for students. These included early admission for high school juniors, dual admission/credit, credit for prior learning, and the waiving of introductory college courses for advanced students.

In other states, flagship universities typically grab the lion’s share of state funding, thanks to greater lobbying power with state legislators, depriving regional public universities of revenue. In Florida, the Board of Regents, not lawmakers, controlled the divvying up of funding among public universities. In 1975, the board resolved that “no university be relegated to second class status because of funding inequities” and enforced that principle with a cost-based funding model that paid each university the same amount for the same activities—a legacy that laid the foundation for today.

In other states, universities use so-called merit aid to lure students from affluent families who can pay higher overall tuition, thus depriving students from poorer families of the financial aid they need. In 1997, the Florida legislature created a merit aid program funded by lottery revenues that was specifically targeted to high-achieving students. Over the ensuing years, this Bright Futures Scholarship Program evolved, supporting more than 1 million students, including members of my own family.

The centralized system, which kept the key decisions of Florida’s higher education outside of the battleground of politics (the legislature), never made anyone—universities, legislature, governors, or faculty—fully happy. So, in 2001, university leaders who were aligned with the legislature and incoming Governor Jeb Bush abolished the Board of Regents and devolved power to specific universities, which were given their own boards of trustees. Fearing that universities would become less efficient and effective, then U.S. Senator and former Florida Governor Bob Graham led the charge to pass a constitutional amendment recentralizing authority into a new and more powerful board of governors. The referendum was adopted in 2002.

Three years later, when the Washington Monthly published its first college rankings, Florida universities did well. The University of Florida ranked 30th out of 245 national universities, ahead of Columbia, Rice, and Dartmouth. Other Florida institutions placed respectably (University of South Florida at 131, Florida International University at 149). In subsequent years, most Florida schools improved their positions, often substantially. Part of the reason was that the magazine incorporated new federal data—for instance, on student earnings after college—that better revealed the superior job Florida universities had long been doing. But part of it was continuing improvements to the Florida system.

I joined the Florida Board of Governors staff in 2013, after working on federal policy issues in Washington, and witnessed those improvements firsthand. One was a performance-funding model that infused hundreds of millions of dollars into the system. Approved in January 2014, and evolving over the ensuing years, the model includes 10 metrics that evaluate schools on statewide goals while leaving space for university boards of trustees to develop metrics important to their own institutions. Another was a “pre-eminence” program that gives extra money to universities that meet tough benchmarks, including certain graduation rates.

Other states allow their public universities great leeway to charge different students different prices for the same degrees. This helps maximize tuition revenue for universities but forces students to untangle high sticker prices with discounts and other types of aid, making it hard for them to comparison-shop. Florida doesn’t permit substantially different tuition pricing. Under a 2010 agreement, the legislature sets a base tuition rate and allows universities the ability to charge no more than 15 percent above that amount.

With control over tuition and fees, and institutional boards of trustees appointed by the governor, the state leadership has a powerful tool to keep costs down. In fact, since Governor Rick Scott first held tuition flat in 2014, the price has remained virtually unchanged.

In a nutshell: Rather than have universities compete on tuition sticker prices and the related confusing suite of federal, state, institutional, and private aid, Florida chose to hold prices steady to make college affordable. This is bolstered by generous state student aid programs.

Another advancement was the system’s focus on ensuring students were getting jobs. The Board of Governors leveraged a partnership with the state department of labor to create a report on the post-college outcomes of bachelor’s degree earners. Since it was first released in 2013, the report has evolved into “My Florida Future”—a public tool to inform students, leaders and parents.

These advancements, and many others over the years, were a direct result of an empowered governing board, with members mostly chosen by the governor and confirmed by the Florida Senate. The governor and the board also appoint all the trustees of individual public universities, again subject to confirmation by the Senate. This system gives the executive branch the ability to implement changes quickly and directly.

Ron DeSantis has utilized that power in ways no previous governor tried, or perhaps even contemplated. In the past, administrations waded into decisions over curriculum only for the purpose of keeping costs for students down—such as limiting the length of a degree program. DeSantis has fundamentally changed what must and must not be taught in college classrooms, based on conservative views. Previous administrations appointed university presidents and trustees largely based on their professional academic record. DeSantis has increasingly placed ideologically aligned partners and former elected officials in those positions.

In 2023, for instance, he replaced six trustees of New College, a famously progressive (and academically distinguished) institution, vowing to turn the school into a Florida version of conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan. The trustees promptly fired New College’s president, leading 40 percent of the faculty to resign. This spring, when the University of Florida’s trustees voted unanimously to accept as the school’s new president Santa Ono, the former president of the University of Michigan, DeSantis’s handpicked Board of Governors overruled that decision—arguing that Ono was a proponent of DEI, even though he had overseen the dismantling of the University of Michigan’s DEI program.

What this will mean for the future of Florida’s higher education system remains to be seen. So far, DeSantis has not rolled back any of the reforms of previous administrations that have made Florida public colleges affordable.

Meanwhile, other states with conservative governors and legislatures are trying to follow DeSantis’s lead. Often that involves passing laws that centralize executive authority, as Texas recently did with legislation that weakens the power of faculty-controlled university senates. Whether this trend will lead to policies that help average students succeed, or merely heighten the culture wars, remains to be seen. 

For now, however, Florida universities continue to excel.