{"id":190671,"date":"2026-03-13T20:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T20:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/190671\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T20:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T20:46:11","slug":"proposal-to-cap-out-of-state-college-enrollment-fails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/190671\/","title":{"rendered":"Proposal to cap out-of-state college enrollment fails"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida\u2019s top universities won\u2019t have to sharply limit the number of out-of-state students<\/a> they admit, a move that could have cost them millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

A legislative plan to curtail non-resident enrollment at the state\u2019s most-selective universities died Friday when the Florida Senate cut the language from the bill.<\/p>\n

The House bill (HB 1279) would have capped out-of-state enrollment at 5% of the first-year, undergraduate student body at the state\u2019s \u201cpreeminent\u201d universities, a state designation for top-performing schools.<\/p>\n

The most selective of those schools now have out-of-state enrollments above that, with Florida State University and the University of Florida at nearly 15% and 20% respectively for their first-year classes.<\/p>\n

The provision also would have applied to Florida International University, the University of South Florida and, very soon, the University of Central Florida, expected to be granted \u201cpreeminent\u201d status later this year.<\/p>\n

The Senate passed the House\u2019s legislation Friday but only after removing the enrollment cap from the multi-pronged education bill.\u00a0 Sen. Alexis Calatayud, the Miami Republican who sponsored the Senate version, did not respond immediately to a request to explain the Senate\u2019s opposition to the out-of-state cap.<\/p>\n

Rep. Jennifer Kincart Jonsson, the House bill\u2019s sponsor and a Republican from Lakeland, proposed the enrollment cap and described it as a Florida-first initiative. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the Senate vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have valedictorians and top-ranked students who are being denied or deferred from our flagship institutions,\u201d Kincart Jonsson said during a Jan. 28 committee meeting. \u201cWe have tax paying parents sending their children out of state, not because those schools are better, but because it\u2019s their opportunity to attend a four-year university after being squeezed out here at home,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The bill acknowledged the worries of Florida parents that state residents were losing admissions spots to out-of-state students and foreigners, especially as competition for spots in the state\u2019s top-ranked school has grown more fierce.<\/p>\n

Florida universities\u2019 acceptance of out-of-state students has increased in recent decades, but compared to high-ranking public universities in other states, the Sunshine State still gives higher priority to its residents.<\/p>\n

At the University of Michigan, for example, which is similar in academic rank to UF, more than half of all students come from another state.<\/p>\n

If it had passed, the enrollment cap would have cost the universities money because out-of-state students pay higher tuition.<\/a> At UF, for example, out-of-state tuition costs $30,900 per year, while Florida residents pay $6,380.<\/p>\n

Kincart Jonsson estimated the state\u2019s schools would lose a combined $54 million in the first year, if the bill had become law. When asked about how schools could make up the loss, she said the amount was small considering their total state funding and the universities \u201cshould be able to figure that out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposed measure would\u2019ve required that Florida residents make up 95% of the first-year, undergraduate fall enrollment \u2013\u2013 a number calculated as a three-year average. The schools that didn\u2019t comply would\u2019ve lost state funding.<\/p>\n

Current Florida law requires that out-of-state enrollment be capped at 10% but that is calculated as an average for the state\u2019s 12 public universities. That means the more selective schools can enroll more students from outside Florida because others enroll fewer.<\/p>\n

Before the House passed the bill on March 3, some lawmakers questioned why Florida needed to further restrict out-of-state enrollment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe the system is working, so why are we changing it?\u201d said Rep. Ashley Viola Gantt, D-Miami, who voted against it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida\u2019s top universities won\u2019t have to sharply limit the number of out-of-state students they admit, a move that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[113,114,266,115,139,141,140,109],"class_list":["post-190671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-education","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}