{"id":284462,"date":"2026-05-26T08:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T08:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/284462\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T08:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T08:38:11","slug":"budget-conference-goodbye-preeminent-funding-for-floridas-top-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/284462\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget conference: Goodbye preeminent funding for Florida’s top universities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year the Legislature approved $40 million. This year: $0.<\/p>\n

Florida\u2019s best universities are not getting any extra state dollars this year as a reward for being in an elite class.<\/p>\n

The Legislature opted to axe preeminent funding completely.<\/p>\n

The chambers ended their budget talks late Sunday as the Legislature works to pass a budget in Special Session after failing to do so during the 60-day Regular Session.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Senate originally sought $100 million<\/a> to reward the \u201cpreeminent\u201d research universities but was unable to reach a compromise with the House which wanted to eliminate it. The Senate later lowered its offer to $50 million<\/a> but the House didn\u2019t bite.<\/p>\n

\u201cI happen to think that preeminence is very, very important. We are the No. 1 state system in the entire country, and preeminence has been a key part of driving that,\u201d Senate Appropriations Committee on Higher Education Chair Gayle Harrell<\/a> told reporters earlier during budget talks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Two years ago, the state\u2019s elite schools shared a pot of $100 million to spend hiring more faculty or beef up student initiatives to keep improving. Last year, the Legislature decided to fund preeminent schools with $40 million.<\/p>\n

Schools that have claimed preeminent status are the University of Florida<\/a>, Florida State University<\/a>, the University of South Florida<\/a> and Florida International University<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the University of Central Florida<\/a> had been seeking to get added to the list for years and was expected to get the preeminent status next month. Only now, UCF won\u2019t get any extra reward that comes with it.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, the institutions can still call themselves preeminent universities without the funding being there. That\u2019s obviously something that throughout the years has sometimes been there and sometimes there hasn\u2019t been,\u201d House Higher Education Budget Subcommittee Chair Demi Busatta<\/a> told reporters earlier.<\/p>\n

To get preeminent status, Florida\u2019s universities must meet 12 out of 13 requirements on students\u2019 average GPA and SAT scores, the school\u2019s endowment size, how many patents faculty have been awarded and graduation rates or freshmen retention rates.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year the Legislature approved $40 million. This year: $0. Florida\u2019s best universities are not getting any extra…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,2846,29,1422,7290,120826,120827,2103,2512,3650],"class_list":["post-284462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-international-university","tag-florida-news","tag-florida-state-university","tag-higher-education","tag-preeminent-research-university","tag-preeminent-universities","tag-university-of-central-florida","tag-university-of-florida","tag-university-of-south-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284462","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=284462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}