Enticing Florida universities' faculty and staff with pay raises seems to be the method of choice for administrators anxious to solve the state's intellectual "brain drain."
The Board of Governors, the State University System's highest governing body, is set to ask for $56.8 million of the 2009-2010 state budget to be allocated for pay raises for faculty and staff of Florida's 11 public universities.
The board's proposal comes less than a week after UF announced an $11 million plan to give some faculty and all staff modest pay raises using revenue from tuition increases and new fees.
Bill Edmonds, the board's spokesman, said the proposal aims to provide financial relief during trying economic times.
State employees have gone two of the last five years without a raise, Edmonds said.
"It'd be irresponsible to go and leave it unaddressed," he said.
The board's budget proposal, which includes the compensation request, will be presented to the board at its meetings next Wednesday and Thursday.
If the board adopts the budget, it will have to go through the Legislature and ultimately Gov. Charlie Crist to go into effect.
Edmonds said it is too early to say how the $56.8 million would be divided among the universities if approved, in part because each university has its own method for payroll.
"But if it were applied uniformly across the board, it would be a 4 percent pay raise," Edmonds said.
UF Provost Joe Glover said the board's raises would not interfere with UF's plan to award faculty and staff pay increases this year because the board's plan would go into effect for the 2009-2010 fiscal year if it passes through the necessary steps.
UF faculty and staff members receiving raises will see their pay increase in Sept. 19 paychecks.
Raises for some UF faculty will be doled out based on merit, while all staff members will receive a raise of 2 percent or $600, whichever is more. Glover said it is much too early to determine how additional raises would be distributed.
"That would largely be up to the president to decide that," Glover said.
Communicating needs in higher education from the board to legislators may be facilitated through a new committee created last week by Sheila McDevitt, the board's new chairwoman, Edmonds said. McDevitt will lead the Legislative, Government and Community Initiatives Committee in efforts to build a "closer and more productive relationship" with the Legislature, which spurned the board earlier this year by calling for its major restructuring that eventually failed.
"The Legislature has their ears open to ideas, and this is one idea here," Edmonds said. "Let's find a way to keep talented people in the system."
