<p>Florida State was named a preeminent university by a law just signed. The law goes into effect on July 1.</p>
<p>Great news for FSU - the law means more money to help raise the quality of the university.</p>
<p>See: Florida</a> State University</p>
<p>I still have a number of issues with this designation. Not the least of which is the fact that the tuition increases that were discussed being allowed for the universities getting this designation were never actually discussed.</p>
<p>It’s already bad that FSU drags their feet as much as possible when releasing their tuition and fees for the upcoming year (it’s often not until late July that this gets published), but the thought that tuition could have- in theory, at least- gone up 40% in only a year or two, potentially on top of the 10-15% increases each year was just unimaginable. </p>
<p>My other concern relating to charging more for tuition (not sure if it’s still part of the bill, although I’d guess it is), is that the costs would be significant enough to cause bright students who can’t afford FSU to go to other schools. I wouldn’t be surprised to see schools like FIU, USF, and UCF to benefit from that (possibly a happy side effect for them?). </p>
<p>Beyond that, I don’t know enough info about this year’s proposals to really say much. I didn’t even realize this was still a concern, considering how Gov. Scott shot it down last year (which was, in my opinion, the right call at the time). </p>
<p>I’m sure I’m of the minority opinion here. There’s just a few things about the whole preeminence thing that’s bugged me since it was announced. And I think a lot of it has to deal with the lack of discussions as to how the monetary aspects of the whole deal is still rather secretive, it seems.</p>
<p>More press on this:</p>
<p>[Florida’s</a> Governor Signs Sweeping Bill to Give Top Universities Special Status - The Ticker - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/floridas-governor-signs-sweeping-bill-to-give-top-universities-special-status/59067]Florida’s”>The Ticker: Florida’s Governor Signs Sweeping Bill to Give Top Universities Special Status)</p>
<p>Pasbal, my understanding is that the tuition part was removed from the bill.</p>
<p>Like I said, I hadn’t really kept up with the bill to see what had changed. I honestly thought the whole “preeminence” thing died off quite a bit after it got shot down last year. </p>
<p>I’ll have to look into it now. It would be interesting to see what the deal is with the tuition increase. If it got removed (I’m guessing that’s what the $15M/yr funding increase is for?) that would be interesting. I believe that increase was a sticking point last year.</p>
<p>It’s a great thing for FSU and the State. Finally, success is being rewarded with additional funding.</p>
<p>[FSU</a>, UF given special preeminent status | Tallahassee Democrat | tallahassee.com](<a href=“http://www.tallahassee.com/viewart/20130611/NEWS01/306110017/FSU-UF-given-special-status]FSU”>http://www.tallahassee.com/viewart/20130611/NEWS01/306110017/FSU-UF-given-special-status)</p>
<p>It appears that the Florida Board of Governors finalized everything yesterday.</p>
<p>Quote from the article:</p>
<p>As preeminent research universities, both UF and FSU are also allowed to mandate that incoming freshmen take up to 12 hours of courses that could not be bypassed by taking Advanced Placement courses in high school.</p>
<p>Which class will this be a requirement for?</p>
<p>If the two universities are not required by this designation to require that, I wonder if either of them will any time soon.</p>
<p>If it was implemented, I don’t think the current incoming freshman class would be held to the requirement. I would think that it would likely start with the 2014 admitted freshmen, or possibly the 2015 admitted freshmen. </p>
<p>I would think it would work much like the summer credit requirement, where you can no longer use AP or other credit to satisfy the requirement. I’m pretty sure that they gave a pretty decent heads-up regarding that change, although I could be wrong (I don’t remember off the top of my head when they made that change). </p>
<p>If you’re already at FSU or UF, I highly doubt they would suddenly change something like that on you.</p>
<p>The Florida Board of Governors implements the new law. Only Florida State and U Florida qualify right away.</p>
<p>See: [Florida</a> State University](<a href=“Florida State University”>Florida State University)</p>
<p>This is notable:</p>
<p>
From the above reference.</p>
<p>I don’t generally pay attention to any of those rankings, for a few reasons, but I find a couple of those statements to be a bit… shocking, to be nice. </p>
<p>A few minutes on Google and I wasn’t able to find the rankings cited in that statement. Anyone with better Google-Fu know where I can find them?</p>
<p>They’re using research expenditures for the rankings. FSU does lead the state in many categories. You have to use this page <a href=“https://webcaspar.nsf.gov/[/url]”>https://webcaspar.nsf.gov/</a> to create the list.</p>
<p>FSU also leads in Fulbright Scholars for this recent period:</p>
<p><a href=“http://us.fulbrightonline.org/uploads/files/top_producing/2012-13/doctoral2012.pdf[/url]”>http://us.fulbrightonline.org/uploads/files/top_producing/2012-13/doctoral2012.pdf</a></p>
<p>Thanks. I wasn’t really able to find what I was looking/hoping for, unfortunately. But that link was still pretty informative if you play around with the available data.</p>
<p>I haven’t been able to figure out how to use that page either, but that’s where NSF points you now for the newest data.</p>
<p>They used to have nice pre-made tables. This info is a little outdated, probably more what you’re looking for though [nsf.gov</a> - NCSES Academic Research and Development Expenditures: Fiscal Year 2009 - US National Science Foundation (NSF)](<a href=“404 Page Not Found | NCSES | NSF”>404 Page Not Found | NCSES | NSF)</p>
<p>Really, I was just looking for how the NSF came to their conclusions. I find a lot of the rankings out there to be a load of political BS, and generally don’t care about them. </p>
<p>I was just looking to see how exactly FSU’s environmental sciences programs ranked #2 in the state, considering the entire program is just now 3 years old, still in a period where the powers that be with the program are trying to figure out what will work best, and honestly hasn’t had a lot of research funding come in from what I could tell.
All I could come up with is that for some reason the Environmental Studies program, which is unrelated, was lumped together, and helped the ranking. Either that or the rest of the schools in the ranking have environmental science programs that are in worse shape than FSU’s almost still new program. </p>
<p>But thank you for the links; they’ve been really helpful. I wish a lot of the data that is used for these rankings (and the rankings themselves, in some cases) were easier to find and use. I know that with the way a lot of the rankings groups pride themselves on their secret formulas you’d think it was the secret Coca-Cola recipe or something…</p>
<p>Maybe they’re not using research funding then. I just assumed because I noticed before that FSU lead the state in areas they mentioned like psychology, computer science, law, communication, social science, and art.</p>
<p>I know FSU’s highly ranked nationally and within Florida in a number of programs- and all of those you listed are ones that FSU prides itself on being ranked really high both statewide and nationally. I was just really shocked by the supposed 2nd in the environmental sciences ranking, and was hoping somewhere would have the rankings and possibly some explanation.</p>
<p>I’m not saying it isn’t possible that FSU’s environmental sciences programs are second best in the state, I’m just saying that I don’t necessarily buy it without seeing some sort of reasoning behind it. The link you showed above with the 2009 stats had FSU 2nd in that category… behind USF (I would have bet the farm we’d have been behind UF). This makes me wonder what exactly is getting classified as “environmental science” in some of these categories. It’s a very broad field that overlaps with almost everything in some way, so I was hoping to find some clarity. Oh well. Even if I don’t buy it, it’s something for FSU to flaunt, I suppose.</p>
<p>Kemosahbee, I come in peace!</p>
<p>You may find the following study of interest, as it attempts to determine the Top American Research Universities by their rank on nine different measures: Total Research, Federal Research, Endowment Assets, Annual Giving, National Academy Members, Faculty Awards, Doctorates Granted, Postdoctoral Appointees, and SAT scores.</p>
<p><a href=“http://mup.asu.edu/research2011.pdf[/url]”>http://mup.asu.edu/research2011.pdf</a></p>
<p>If comparing UF to FSU, you should use the lower number for UF, 232,737 ($000, as this excludes standalone medical and Other Specialized Institutions) and not the 592,082 figure.</p>
<p>The report also has the other Florida schools, such as UCF and USF.</p>
<p>Comparison’s between “preeminent” universities can be very subjective. Instead of comparing the two universities, you can use the report to determine how the 9 factors have changed over time, or what % of research $ is assigned by “Major Discipline”. For example on page 48, we see that FSU allocates 27.6% to the physical sciences, while only allocating 1.5% to math.</p>