UF was awarded roughly $1.7 million last week after the Board of Governors authorized the release of Florida’s performance funding.
A total of $20 million was divvied up between 11 Florida public universities based on three criteria; percent of graduates with bachelor’s degrees employed and/or continuing their education one year after graduation; median average full-time wages of undergraduates employed in Florida one year after graduation; average cost per undergraduate to the institution.
Universities were ranked zero to three for each metric.
UF’s cut was 9 percent of the $20 million, coming in at $1,739,130. The University of Central Florida and University of South Florida received the largest portions of the funds, scoring the highest on the benchmarks and receiving $2,608,696 each.
UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes said the caveat with the benchmarks is that its measurements apply only to Florida. Students who might have graduated and moved out of state weren’t counted.
“The bottom line is our students do get jobs, just not all of them in the state of Florida,” she said.
She said the Board of Governors is looking at expanding the metrics for next year.
Joe Glover, UF provost, said the money hasn’t been designated a purpose yet.
“It will eventually be allocated by the president and me,” he said. “Frankly, we haven’t even turned our attention to it yet.”
He said the metrics used by the Board of Governors were restrictive, and part of why UF wasn’t awarded more money is that the data itself wasn’t good.
For now, UF is focused on working with its $15 million in preeminence funding, he said.
A version of this story ran on page 8 on 10/15/2013 under the headline "UF receives $1.7M in performance funding from government"
