So is this action good for students, families, or residents of Florida?
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article255335251.html
TLDR - Florida Board of Governors wants to give UF, FSU and USF $50 million each to help improve their USNews Ranking.
Yes it is a good thing.
UF FSU and USF are the states three highest ranked Public Universities .
Florida has a designation of Preeminent University. These three are the only ones that currently meet it. To be considered preeminent, a university must meet 11 of 12 metrics outlined by the Board of Governors;
From the article
The schools would use the $150 million to hire and retain faculty; improve buildings and other infrastructure; pay for research and development; and help fund support for student transfers. The money would be disbursed through the Florida Preeminence Program, started in 2013 by the Legislature to reward high-achieving universities based on 12 metrics.
This is good for Students and Families by giving them more top school choices instate.
Florida has about the lowest tuition in the country about $6,500 a year. and if they meet their goals of having 2 Top 10 and 3 in the top 25 Public Universities, Itās a win for the residents of Florida allowing students more access to Top schools in state with less Debt.
Florida also has a requirement that Public Universities be 90% instate residences. This is system wide for the 12 Public Universities so some may be slightly lower than 90%. Even so the instate students will benefit the most.
Not sure why USF though.
And what hapens to the others?
The State of Florida has a Tier system with preeminent University being the Top Tier.
This was Put into Law in 2013.
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=1000-1099/1001/Sections/1001.7065.html
Only three Public Universities have reached that level UF, FSU, and USF.
They have to meet 11 out of the 12 Metrics Established by the State.
The money mentioned in the article is available for Preeminent schools
Two other Schools UCF and FIU are emerging Preeminent
They have to meet at least 6 out of 12 metrics
They also can receive extra funding.
Florida also has Extra Performance based funding not tied to the Preeminent ratings
Those Metrics are different than the Preeminent
https://www.flbog.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/BUD-06a-PBF-Information-2021-22.pdf
If the President of Princeton University dislikes the US News college rankings despite his school being ranked #1 for 11 years straight, then Princeton University should follow the lead of Reed College and refuse to participate in the annual US News rankings. Indeed.
And Tom Brady will refuse to participate in the Super Bowlš
Oh please, he was merely pointing out what is commonly accepted at CC, that ratings donāt matter much. The only people who can point this out without being accused of jealousy are indeed those at the top. It was a well written piece about the limits of ratings and the diversity of higher education options.
Thanks 
Since the trial on the 2018 US News cheating scandal is currently underway, it gives us an opportunity of an inside view how trivial it is for colleges to āgame the systemā and how huge the financial motivations are to do so:
There is a reason why some colleges stopped submitting data to US News, as they would either have play the games themselves to obtain realistic ranking vs. others that actively do, or just to accommodate whatever new twist is introduced every year to avoid US News from having to rehash mostly identical rankings from year to year.
I was looking up information on CC comparing Ole Miss to Bama for considering both of these schools. This quote is from a thread I found from 2013.
āAlabama has moved up to 77 in the current USNews ranking. Ole Miss is showing as 151.ā
Fast forward to 2022, Alabama, and Ole Miss are both ranked 148 in National Universities. Does anyone have any insight into why Bama has dropped so much in these rankings?
Rankings now take into account (or at a different percentage) % Pell Grant recipients and financial aid; rankings also took class size into account ā Alabama cut funding so that class size has increased and need-based FA for Alabamans has decreased (this may change in the next edition because they created a scholarship program for lower-income Alabama kids called Alabama Advantage, although covering full tuition for FULL Pell recipients doesnāt solve the main problem of paying for fees, room, board, and books on an income in the 24-26K range nor does it solve the problem for kids whose families make 30 or 35K a year.)
The honors program and its quality have not changed despite the change in ranking 
There was a whole thread on it:
Alabama has seemingly become more and more popular for kids from our region of the country, the Northeast. Unfortunately, I donāt have that much knowledge of either of these two schools. It seems, according to the stats available, that Alabama gets students from all over the country, and Ole Miss is more regional.
Without doing the research that sounds accurate.
However, our local public here in the SF Bay Area has sent zero HS grads to Alabama in at least the past decade. So, itās not popular here. Must be a regional thing.
In the eyes of some out-of-state students, University of Mississippi may have had more of the negative connotations of the deep South than University of Alabama because:
Bama is a national powerhouse admissions wise - now has more NMFs than anwhere. They buy kids in as does Ole Missā¦but you can bet football is a factor. We live in TN but my son goes to Bama for less than UTK.
As you are from the NE, hereās an articleā¦thereās a similar articles for Illinios where Bama is strong.
How the University of Alabama Became a National Player - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Comparing common data sets from 2013-14 with 2020-21, I see that Alabamaās six year graduation rate has improved from 67% to 72% and its ACT range has improved by a point from 22-30 to 23-31. However, itās a bit puzzling that apps have increased 28%, acceptances have increased 82% and enrollees have only increased 1%.
Itās become increasingly popular with the broader applicant pool but yield has declined from 37% to 21%. The latter is more in line with private university yields in the 40-100 range that donāt heavily rely on early decision. Maybe Alabama is pulling back on OOS merit scholarships and financial aid and itās more appealing to attend in-state. Not relative to Tennessee perhaps.
The merit even for this year is still insane vs. tuition for automerit. There is another level on top of this - my daughter got another $4K. Tutition is $31Kish - so as aggressive as ever.
I know every year the school says largest class ever - and they are growing, up from 33.6K in 2012 to 38.2 in 2021.
Out-of-State Freshman Scholarships ā Scholarships | The University of Alabama (ua.edu)
We get maybe one or two a year that go to Bama out of a smaller suburban NJ public high school. A somewhat educated guess it is driven by football and or that it is easier to get into than schools like Georgia or UF. These schools are very popular in our area.
Iād say four things top of mind. Not sure if you read the NYT article I sent.
They have recruiters everywhere
Football. When I went to Syracuse in the age of Pearl Washington and Derrick Coleman, it was known big east hoops was a huge draw
Uf and UGa, even FSU, are not easy admits. Bama is
$$. Kids turn down Ivy and other top 20 to go there. $$ is why, Iām sure they have more national merit finalists than any other school.
But lots of Southern publics now draw from the NE. Clemson, U of SC, Ole Miss
But Bama runs nationally. They crush Illinois. Tons of could be Fighting Illini saying Roll Tide instead.
For extra credit, their huge Honors complex Ridgecrest gives kids their own private dorm room as a first year with one bathroom for two kids. You get a living room and kitchen too. Y my son chose it for engineering over Purdue.