In an op-ed submitted to the Miami Herald by former FIU president and business professor, Modesto Maidique, FIU’s image and its FIUBeyondPossible2020 strategy were looked at with a critical eye. Maidique urged the University to “take the painful step of reducing freshmen enrollment or forget becoming a strong research university.”
The editorial board at FIU Student Media stands in its belief that FIU must not view Maidique’s criticism as an attack. In order to improve, FIU must re-evaluate and redirect its efforts in a decisive and objective manner, which includes being open to critiques. It is as Maidique wrote: “No pain. No gain.”
FIU’s strategic plan, FIUBeyondPossible2020, which FIU hopes will contribute to both an increase in enrollment and its image as a research institution by 2020, is designed to promote student success at the university.
However, Florida’s board of governors shifted its requirements for state funding back in 2013, when the University of Florida lobbied to create a new “elite” state university category, known as “pre-eminent” universities. The new category required universities to meet 12 points, in order to not only be considered “pre-eminent”, but to also receive $12 million in state funding.
The board of governors then implemented an addition to the new funding formula, which would allocate $5 million annually to universities that met at least half of the 12 point criteria, known as “emerging pre-eminent universities”.
Even though this measure was meant to focus on up-and-coming universities, FIU did not meet any of the criteria, and has been denied state funding based on these measures. This shift has served as a roadblock and substantially affected FIU’s plans.
Providing individuals with an equal amount of opportunity to continue forward in their pursuits within their educational careers is the mission. We need our legislators to understand the importance of a quality education for all, and not just for the few.
“This funding cut will be painful, but several local institutions have undergone similar cuts — including Miami Dade College and the University of Miami. More recently, FAU tightened enrollment requirements and academic standards to improve the institution’s performance and succeeded.” Maidique wrote.
He additionally proposed two plans of action FIU can take in order to get out of the “educational basement.”
His first proposal suggests that the University should “appeal to the legislators in our state to change the funding formula to reflect universities with missions of newer, urban universities.”
The new funding formula favors “older, residential schools as opposed to newer, metropolitan ones,” a category which FIU falls under.
Maidique’s second suggestion is that FIU should “toughen up,” as he puts it, in order to meet these requirements to achieve “emerging status.”
Maidique continues by stating that a solution to FIU’s stumble from its prestigious place can be found in its admissions. He urges the University to raise its performance in six-year graduation rates, the “dominant dimension of the new funding formula” and to admit students who perform better on the SAT.
The Florida Consortium of Metropolitan Research Universities such as USF, UCF and FIU serve a broad base of Floridian and minority students. Together, they have served approximately 162,000 students, consisting of 60 percent of Florida’s population and 70 percent of Florida’s minority population, according to FIU’s strategic planning and implementation figures presented in 2015.
However, scaling down the size of the admittance to one of the most prominent research universities in the country, which also aims to provide an affordable, quality education to all students, does not fall within the mission of our university.
We must remember what the purpose of education means within our state and community.
We do not need to recruit “better” students, we must focus on inspiring our community and providing education to those who want it.
Modesto Madique’s piece in The Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article80453362.html
Hello I’m Renzo Reategui an FIU alumnus. I hope the best to my Alma mater and because of this, I strongly support Dr. Maidique’s stance.
Lets state the obvious, to become a great university when compared to all the other universities, in and out of state, student quality is key (selectivity). For nearly a decade FIU has been adding around 2,000 additional students every year. We are at around 55,000 students for a university just over 50 years old! Although we are not even ranked on influential ranking indicators like US news ( that actually do matter, since prospective students use it to get an idea of the quality of the university) every year we are getting closer to becoming the largest university by enrollment in the entire US!!! We’re currently in the top 10 for sure. Is this our priority? Does this reflect or prove the quality of the university? No, it doesn’t. The best universities and those which aspire to get more reputation and prestige don’t have as their priority, increasing student enrollment, only for-profit universities do. Is this the example we are following?
UF and FSU are top public universities in our state. USF is next and FIU and UCF are close, all the other public universities are behind us in almost every way. Do we want to jump to the into the “emerging pre-eminent” category like UCF or just settle for an “ok” university and not improve on same pace as other public universities.
We DO NOT need to scale down the size of admittance, but instead control our growth, which we are not doing. If you do your research, very few universities in the US are increasing their student population as fast as FIU, just compare our school with the other state universities and you’ll get the idea. For the sake of increasing enrollment our progress is becoming too slow.
The average GPA of incoming freshman of 3.9 is actually average when compared to the other state universities in FL. Our SAT scores?? for the year 2015 we are in 8th place out of 12 in the state (FLBOG.EDU) You see, many state universities are being more selective and not so aggressively adding more and more students like if it was a for-profit school.
The GPA and SAT scores were retrieved from FLBOG.EDU.