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Senate committee reviews Florida College System funding model and small‑college floor
Summary
The committee heard a presentation on a new recommended funding model for the Florida College System that uses a three‑year average FTE, an index rewarding workforce enrollment and completions, and a targeted floor to reduce disparities. College leaders said the model balances enrollment, completions and regional cost differences; the legislature
The Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee received a presentation on a recommended funding model for the Florida College System as lawmakers consider how to allocate operational dollars to the state's 28 colleges.
The model matters because it is the mechanism the colleges and the department expect policymakers to use to distribute a base of recurring appropriations and any additional funds the Legislature provides for the Florida College System.
Kathy Hebda, chancellor of the Division of Florida Colleges at the Florida Department of Education, told the committee the model starts with a three‑year average FTE and last year's base appropriation and then distributes new funds through two components: an index distribution and targeted funding. "The College System program fund is the base budget, if you wanna think about it that way, the recurring dollars, operational dollars for the Florida College System," Hebda said.
Hebda said the presidents of the 28 colleges developed guiding principles and ran many model variants (the department staff tested 172 versions) before agreeing on a recommended approach. The index rewards enrollment (50 percent of the index), workforce‑weighted FTE (weighted at 1.5 times non‑workforce enrollment), completions (40 percent of the index with degree completions weighted more heavily) and a small‑college factor to address economies of scale. The model also applies a regional cost differential at the end of the calculation.
The targeted funding component establishes a per‑student funding floor based on the K‑12 base student allocation and recommends additional dollars be distributed to colleges whose state funding per FTE falls below that target. Hebda said the spreadsheet‑based model is transparent and can be rerun with current data each year; how much money is available to distribute remains a legislative decision.
Seminole State College President Georgia Lorenz, who participated in the presidents' discussions, praised the outcome. "I'm very proud of the model. I'm proud to have been part of the process to develop it," Lorenz said, adding that the model holds institutions accountable for enrollment and completions while allowing flexibility to respond to state priorities such as workforce needs.
Sen. Davis asked whether the model had identified colleges below the funding floor. Hebda said the spreadsheet calculates the per‑FTE funding for each college and that "there are probably 10 or so colleges that are below that target," with a range of sizes and circumstances causing the shortfall. Hebda said it is up to the Legislature to decide how much money to put through the model to raise underfunded colleges toward the floor.
Committee members asked about how the model accounts for high‑cost programs (for example, nursing, lab sciences) and faculty compensation. Hebda said workforce programs and baccalaureate workforce enrollments receive the 1.5 weight; institutional leaders designed the weights as proxies to reflect the higher costs associated with those programs rather than attempting to parse every student/course by cost.
The presentation closed with the committee thanking presenters and one college president for attending. No formal votes on funding allocations were taken at the meeting.
