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USF surges on after pre-eminence let down By Miki Shine
May 17, 2017 Vol. 54 No. 58
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While standing up on stage at a commencement ceremony May 5, USF Provost Ralph Wilcox felt his phone “start to blow up” with questions about the school’s four-year graduation rates. The questions came about as the Florida Legislature made an amendment to a bill that would have put USF as one of the top three schools in the state as pre-eminent with a funding to go with the status. According to Wilcox, the majority of the extra money was intended to go toward hiring new professors. USF is classified as emerging pre-eminent, along with UCF, and currently splits a pool of $10 million in state funding. However, the pre-eminent universities of UF and FSU split a pool of $20 million in state funding. The Legislature started looking at changing one of the requirements for pre-eminence from a six-year graduation rate of 70 percent to a four-year graduation rate of 50 percent. On the last day of the session, a proposed amendment changed it to a four-year graduation rate at 60 percent. “What mystifies us as an institution, and quite frankly it was immensely disappointing, was the lack of transparency within the legislative process and the absolute paucity of consulting with the Board of Governors apparently as well as the universities,” Wilcox said. “But rather, just simply out of the blue on the last
n See STATUS on PAGE 3
Journaling to de-stress Page 4
University treated unjustly Page 6
USF baseball in running to host regional Page 8