PCC Among Colleges Looking to Upgrade

WINTER HAVEN | Polk Community College President Eileen Holden will be in Niceville on Thursday as Gov. Charlie Crist signs a bill to put community colleges interested in providing four-year degrees into a new Florida College System.

Before he signs, however, she and presidents of eight other colleges have a busy schedule. They will meet for dinner Wednesday night and again Thursday morning to start discussing guidelines for that new system.

The bill places all of those colleges into a Florida College Pilot Project. They will report by January on the best ways for four-year programs to get approved, funded and otherwise started at schools like PCC whose primary emphasis has been two-year degrees.

The group includes colleges such as St. Petersburg College, a former community college that already combines two-year and four-year degree programs, and those like PCC that are giving four-year programs serious consideration.

"As we are crafting our higher-education system in Florida, our local college is at the table," Holden said proudly. "If you're not at the table, you're reacting to what other people decide."

Other pilot colleges are Chipola, Edison, Daytona Beach, Miami-Dade, Santa Fe, Indian River and Okaloosa-Walton. Niceville, where the signing ceremony is scheduled, is in Okaloosa County in the Florida Panhandle.

Any recommendations from colleges in the pilot project require approval by two-thirds of them. At a minimum, the legislation says, they need to address these topics:

A process for the state Board of Education to follow when considering proposals for new four-year degree programs.

Criteria for community colleges to make the transition into state colleges offering four-year degrees (but not graduate degrees).

The model to use in funding state colleges.

Colleges in the pilot program will give their report to Crist, the speaker of the Florida House and the president of the Florida Senate. They are required to collaborate with a new 12-member Florida College System Task Force. Its members will be the Florida commissioner of education and 11 members he appoints.

In the legislation, the word "community" has been dropped from the names of pilot colleges. PCC, for example, is listed as Polk College.

The legislation gives the board of trustees at those community colleges permission to make that name change.

Other provisions include:

The Florida College System would include public, postsecondary institutions that grant two-year and four-year degrees.

They won't be allowed to offer graduate degrees, keeping them separate from state universities like the University of South Florida.

Programs and services should save money by providing degrees less expensively than at a university.

They won't be able to have intercollegiate athletics past the two-year period.

They must continue to provide easy access to associate-level degree programs.

Many students who would take advantage of four-year programs at PCC would be older, "placebound," students working in the community, Holden said.

These would be students interested in a four-year degree to advance in their current fields or switch to new ones.

[ Robin Williams Adams can be reached at robin.adams@theledger.com or 863-802-7558. Read her blog at robinsrx.theledger.com. ]