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Florida’s 11 University Presidents were in Tallahassee today to talk with state House leaders about how to improve higher education in a year when budgets are being cut. The Presidents say current plans could cost up to 25 hundred faculty jobs. As an alternative to cuts, the presidents say a mix of higher tuition and more state funding would help drive the economy.

University of South Florida President Judy Genshaft says she would like the USF board to have the same latitude to raise and lower tuition that it has for graduate students.

“Well if you allow the boards to have some power with the tuition, just like they did with the graduate tuition, it gives us the opportunity to work with our constituent communities, and raise or lower tuition depending on the market place,” Genshaft said.

FAMU President James Ammons told house leaders he has room for more students, but not in the popular pharmacy program. Ammons says now is the time to be adding seats in Pharmacy…not going the other way.

“At the current time, we’re getting ten applications for ever seat. We’re getting about 1500 qualified applications for a 150 seat class,” Ammons said. “This program needs to expand rather than contract.”

University of Florida President Bernie Machen was positive after the meeting with house speaker Marco Rubio.

“I think this is a real positive meeting,” Machen said. “It doesn’t solve the budget problems, it doesn’t solve the shortage of money for new students for this year. But it means government wants to sit down with us, who are the people who have to make this work, and see if we can come out with a different way of doing business.”