Florida’s Senate Bill 86 is a proposal to cut Bright Futures funding in part by limiting scholarship aid to students whose majors are not on a list of majors that “lead directly to employment”, in the words of the bill text. This provision has sparked angry responses from around the state (for example, see this Orlando Sentinel editorial)
It would also reduce Bright Futures aid to a student “by the number of postsecondary credit hours the student has earned from articulated acceleration mechanisms”, including Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, Cambridge and dual enrollment. This provision would hit aspiring engineers and scientists particularly hard.
Some of the commentary on the idea of cutting Bright Futures aid for students whose majors are not on the approved list of “directly” employable majors has noted that students of color disproportionately choose majors in the humanities and social sciences, and so they would be especially harmed by such a rule. In Florida, this is particularly true for Black students. Of the engineering bachelors’ degrees awarded by Florida’s State University System institutions in 2018-19, only 6.4% were Black. For comparison, 21.6% of the students in the state’s public K-12 schools were Black in the Fall of 2020. The corresponding percentages of Black students among computer science, physics and math majors were 8.0%, 3.9% and 6.8%.
Despite having the apparent support of the Senate President and the House Speaker, SB 86 hasn’t yet started to move. We can only hope that the bill dies right where it is. If the state needs to save money on Bright Futures scholarships and wants to encourage more students to select high-paying majors like those in engineering and the sciences, there are many better ways of doing so.
Bridge to Tomorrow 