Lawmakers get smart on Bright Futures

Bright Futures scholarships may be as sacrosanct in Tallahassee as Social Security is on Captiol Hill, but state lawmakers are taking on the college fund anyway.

Senate Bill 1344 would tighten requirements and cap each grant at four years. Currently, a student who loses a Bright Futures scholarship because of low grades can reapply when grades improve, and qualified students are receiving virtually free tuition for up to seven years

At $420 million a year and rising, the 13-year-old Bright Futures program is simply not sustainable, say a growing legion of skeptics. With Florida already subsidizing roughly 80 percent of the cost of state university tuitions for some 180,000 students, modest belt-tightening seems to be in order -- especially in an era of chronic grade inflation.

SB1344 cleared the Senate Higher Education Appropriations Committee 4-1 on Friday.

As Sen. Lee Constantine, R-Altamonte Springs, put it, "This is the right thing to do. It's the right thing for the program in the long run."