Senate threatens Florida scholarships

Bill regarding Bright Futures intends on limiting the student eligibility to earn scholarship funds in Florida and raises outcry

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Bright Futures, a merit-based program that provides scholarship money to Florida students, provided aid for over 2,000,000 students in the 2019-2020 academic year, according to floridastudentfinancialaidsg.org. Each year, the program offers either 75% or 100% funds to every eligible student to attend any college in Florida.

Although a successful program, on Feb. 23, Republican Senator Dennis Baxley in Ocala proposed to sponsor the Florida Senate Bill 86 (SB 86) that alters the program's scholarship aid. Bright Futures currently gives aid to those who meet their merit and academic requirements, but Baxley hopes to make the program more focused on future employment. He plans on putting this goal into fruition by adding more specific requirements to the Bright Futures application.

Currently, the Bright Futures program does not discriminate which areas of education students put their interest into, such as programs and majors. However, the bill's updates include tying the amount of money a student is likely to receive with the major they intend to study in college. If the bill passes, majors will receive a ranking by the state's Board of Governors based on how "successful" they predict the major is, determined by the types of jobs each major leads to. These rankings will push students away from pursuing what they want, and creates the idea that their academic accomplishments are not as deserving of support if their field of interest is deemed less successful. The act of praising specified fields could also be detrimental to the Florida workforce as it could lead to a surplus of jobs in one field and shortages in others.

The bill also alters aid for students who have taken Advanced Placement (AP) and Dual Enrollment (DE) classes. The bill's changes could disadvantage students taking these higher-level classes by providing less aid. AP and DE classes are typically taken by students to have a better understanding of college level classes. However, the Florida Senate Bill 86 will reduce scholarship money for every college credit an applicant has. The bill will directly affect high school student enrollment in college level classes, which would lead to students being less prepared for college and creating a decline in the need for AP and DE teachers.

If the bill passes, it will go into effect July 1, altering the aid of new college students and students who are currently receiving funds. This means classes 2022-2025 would be affected starting this summer, followed by every class going forward. The bill was passed through the Senate Education Committee, in which they approved the contents. Since then, the bill has gathered more media coverage and negative feedback by Florida residents led Baxley to file for amendments that keep the ranking of majors as a suggestion to students but claims it will not be used to determine the program's amount of aid. The amendments also remove statements about reducing aid based on college credits earned in high school. If the amendments don't go through, the impacted students will be put in the position of scrambling to find other sources of funding before the upcoming 2021-2022 school year after previously being awarded for their hard work in high school through the Bright Futures program. However, there will still be changes made to Bright Futures. To stay updated on the bill, visit floridasenate.gov.

Published: https://issuu.com/mustangpress/docs/the_hoofbeat__issue_5__vol._19__mar._2021