For years, the state's public universities have tugged at the Legislature to pour more funding into the State University System - one that currently ranks last in student-teacher ratios nationwide.
Each year, universities receive more freshmen applications than the year before, producing freshmen classes with consistently higher GPAs and test scores than previously admitted students.
But none of it matters if the university system can't guarantee quality education, said UF President Bernie Machen in a phone interview Thursday.
Machen and the other 10 public state university presidents met with Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, R-Miami, and Board of Governors Chancellor Mark Rosenberg on Thursday to discuss ways to bolster the university system.
Rosenberg said the Board of Governors, the State University System's highest governing body, came up with a funding target for hiring needed faculty and advisers statewide: $200 million each year for five years.
Machen said that figure was a worthwhile goal, but no funding was secured and no proposals approved in the informal meeting.
"I think it may sound like a lot of money, but the university system graduates 65,000 every year and supposedly we're going to go up," Machen said. "It didn't scare the speaker, let's put it that way."
The money could come from a combination of state funding and tuition increases, said board spokesman Bill Edmonds. None of the details were hammered out yet, Edmonds said.
"Clearly, the board thinks that tuition is going to have to go up if we're going to address some of these fundamental problems," he said. "But we don't really want to make students pay for everything."
Rubio has said he supports a small tuition increase but wants universities to make financial aid a priority.
However, universities and the board have clamored for hiked tuition to hire more faculty members and advisers.
The board voted at a January meeting to raise tuition at all the universities by 8 percent in fall. That increase will bring in about $32 million statewide.
He said it's not nearly enough.
The 8 percent increase won't affect UF, Florida State University and the University of South Florida, however, because those universities are already expecting 15 percent hikes due to the Tuition Differential Program, which also begins in fall.
The program allows the three universities to raise tuition 40 percent over four years, provided that each year's increase does not exceed 15 percent.
Though the board approved the 8 percent hike, it is not yet known whether it's allowed to do so.
The board and the Legislature are currently locked in a lawsuit sparked by former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham's assertion that the board should ultimately have tuition-setting authority.
Gov. Charlie Crist suggested giving nearly $5.5 billion of state funds to universities in his proposed budget to the Legislature in January, but he did not call for tuition increases. The Legislature has the final say on the budget, and its regular session begins in March.
Machen said he was confident the Thursday meeting was a success.
"We feel like we've been sort of left out in the cold to deal with our problem by ourselves," Machen said.
"We all saw this as a gesture by the speaker to say that he wants to help and he wants to put higher-ed in a good place."
