VIDEO: Brace for tuition hikes, says FGCU president

Further tuition hikes will be needed as the Florida Legislature fights to make ends meet, says Florida Gulf Coast University President Wilson Bradshaw. Bradshaw is this week's guest on Comcast's "One on One with Jeff Lytle.'' Video highlights and partial transcripts of that and past interviews are available at The entire 30-minute program airs Sunday at noon on Comcast CN14.

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Lytle: Are you going to have the money to make good on the mission and meet the growth targets for Florida Gulf Coast University?

Bradshaw: Frankly the money is not going to come from the sources that it came from before. The amount of our operating budget that we get from our state appropriation is going down. I think what people can expect to see, not only at FGCU but at our sister state universities, is an increase in tuition.

And so the source of the dollars — and has been over the last couple of years — less from the state, more from the students, unfortunately.

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Lytle: Any projections in mind that you can preview for us?

Bradshaw: Well, I'll tell you last year tuition went up 15 percent and we are modeling about 15 percent for the upcoming year, although we're modeling 10 percent and 5 percent as well just to see the dollars that are generated by the number of students we anticipate.

But I think it's honest to say that there will be an increase in tuition. Exactly what it will be, I don't know, 5, 10 or 15 percent.

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Lytle: Tuition as we speak for a full-time student would be in the ballpark of what now?

Bradshaw: About $5,200.

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Lytle: Still a heck of a deal.

Bradshaw: It is a very good deal, and we still remain as a system at the bottom wrung of tuition nationwide. Average tuition nationwide is approaching about $6,500.

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Lytle: Having said that, if you're one of those students and one of those families, that's still real money.

Bradshaw: Oh, absolutely. I think we have to be, as we have been in the past, we need to make sure that students who have financial needs that we have resources to address that need. And about 30 percent last year of our tuition increase, we reserve for need-base financial aid.

I think if we go forward with these increases, we need to make sure that there are not financial barriers for students who are otherwise eligible to attend our school.

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Lytle: What can you tell us about the major state scholarship programs keeping pace with these tuition increases? Are they going to be able to do that?

Bradshaw: I think less and less. You're talking about primarily Bright Futures. And Bright Futures has been a wonderful program for students here in the state of Florida. It will continue.

I think that it will cover less and less of the tuition that it's currently structured. The Legislature can certainly fix that. But these are very tight times, and everyone is tightening their belts.

I think for the next two, three, maybe four years, Bright Futures is not going to cover as much of the tuition as it did in the past.

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Lytle: What do you tell students who come up to you and say, what are my job prospects after I graduate? Or maybe the question is, the University of Florida — at least at one time — tracked all its graduates very closely, and they can tell you how many graduates went on to work in their fields, etc.

How is that shaping up today, given the economy and what it is?

Bradshaw: We are getting better and better at tracking our graduates, and we do know that our graduates are successful in getting jobs within their field within the first maybe couple or three years. But there's certainly a need for more teachers, and we have our College of Education geared up to train more teachers, not just in a traditional way, but with people with changing careers. Our College of Business is starting, and those students when they graduate, they have opportunities.

But of course it depends on the discipline. The baccalaureate in history may be a little more challenging than say the bachelor of science and computer science.

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Lytle: Is the timing good for your School of Music to be coming on?

Bradshaw: Absolutely. Our School of Music has really distinguished itself. The students and faculty in a very short period of time are building a new building to house the school of music. And I think that will allow us to attract more and better music students.

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Lytle: There will be jobs for them?

Bradshaw: Oh sure, sure. We live here in Naples, Fort Myers, the arts are very popular here, and so there will be opportunities for our students.

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Lytle: I can tell you by my untrained ear that the chorus and orchestra are fantastic.

Bradshaw: Yes, they are.

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Lytle: Let me ask you about another thing going on on campus. You have this initiative to crack down on cheating, which I find absolutely fascinating, because number one, it's coming from students, and number two, the issue is so huge.

Bradshaw: It is, it is. And we approach it from a perspective of academic integrity and it is coming from students, and what we need to do is to make sure we all understand what the expectations are of our students when they come to FGCU, and the academic integrity policy that will work well will make that very clear.

Oftentimes students don't realize that they're plagiarizing or cheating.

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Lytle: How can you not know that? It's become such a way of life?

Bradshaw: You go to the Internet and you get information, and you cut and paste, and many of our students have been cutting and pasting for a long time.

I think they just need to be aware. And it's certainly our responsibility to teach them and instruct them on what is acceptable and what's not.

It's not like when we were in school when you're looking over someone's shoulder and copying answers. That's pretty blatant and pretty obvious. But there are more subtle things that students may engage in that they may not be aware is cheating.

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Lytle: Has this project decided yet what will be regarded as cheating? Will it be the borrowing of a quiz from the last semester's geography class, or will it mean handing in a stolen essay?

Bradshaw: Well therein lies the problem — not the problem, but the challenge in defining it. I mean, when you quiz students, are you asking whether they can use a paper that they've written before, or a good chunk of it, in another class? A majority of students will say, that's fine.

And we have to have them understand that it's not fine, and certainly not as fine as they think it is.

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Lytle: A paper that they themselves wrote? Or a friend wrote, or somebody in California wrote?

Bradshaw: Well, I'd like to say that they wrote, but any of those scenarios are not acceptable.

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Lytle: And then the next question would be — see this is not an easy topic — if you are caught in one of these lower level situations, or if you're caught handing in a stolen paper or thesis, then will all the offenses be, you're out of school, or will the punishment fit the crime?

Bradshaw: The punishment of the disciplinary action will be graduated, and we have a judicial process to put that student to whoever is being accused of cheating and make a determination on what has happened and ultimately consistent with the policy that we're developing will take appropriate disciplinary action.

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Lytle: This is not going to be easy to do.

Bradshaw: No, no. But I have, as a provost and vice president of academic affairs elsewhere, been involved with developing academic integrity policies, so it's not foreign to me. But it is challenging.

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Lytle: Does it work?

Bradshaw: Well, it works in defining what the parameters are, and I think it works. I think it works if the goal is to inform students so that we all have a common understanding of what cheating is and what is acceptable and what is not. There's probably always going to be cheating. It's part of nature of being human, to some degree, but we need to make sure we have policies and procedures to address that. And that's what we're doing.

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Lytle: Different topic: Your men's basketball coach, your new athletic director, whether the coach should be kept aboard, what do you think?

Bradshaw: What do I think about what?

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Lytle: What do you think about the future of the men's basketball coach?

Bradshaw: I think the new athletic director is assessing all of our academic programs and the leadership in all of them. I'm sure we'll be talking to Coach David Balza, who is our founding coach for the men and had huge success for many, many years in Division 2, and so he's still a valued employee at FGCU.

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Lytle: Would it be appropriate for you to weigh in with your opinion?

Bradshaw: I meet one on one with the athletic director. He is my direct report so he knows my opinions about various things.

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Lytle: Can you share them with us? This is a big deal.

Bradshaw: It's a big deal, but it's also a matter of an employment situation, and I think to be fair to everyone involved, including the university and the students who are being recruited and who are already there, I think we just need to let the process work out with the Athletic Department and the coaches.

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Lytle: One school of thought would be that given Coach Balza's tenure, and even though the men's team didn't have such a good year, but there are bigger things on the horizon, and your budget is about to increase. So shouldn't he be given a chance to work in this new day that's coming to the university?

Bradshaw: Well, I'll be talking to the AD about he sees all that. You mentioned the budget will be increased, and could you tell me where the source for this is? I'd like to know.

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Lytle: The level of the playing field is about to go up.

Bradshaw: It really is. And I think part of that, part of what we'll have to address is the budget. Ken Cavanaugh said some of those things: when you look at the A-Sun and how our teams are financed and scholarships. And we have to address that, and the way to address that is in various ways.

The major way is raising more money and we're doing things to see if we can tap untapped resources.

And I think becoming a Division 1 athletic program will help that.

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Lytle: But then, shouldn't Coach Balza at least be given a chance to participate in that since he helped get you where you are today?

Bradshaw: Well I think that's something that the AD is going to have to determine in consultation with me and everyone else.

Again, everyone should know that Coach Balza has done exceptionally well with our program. We're only 13 years old and we've have basketball maybe seven years, eight? So we recognize he's brought a lot of quality to that program and that's highly valued.

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Lytle: Before we go a break I need to ask you about the Faculty Senate the other day voting on the idea of extending benefits to domestic partners of faculty members. The question to you is, how would that work? I understand that any faculty member who wants to take advantage of that, that money would not come from public money. It would come from money raised from another source.

Bradshaw: I can tell you how it works in other places. It works just as you described.

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Lytle: Florida law ...

Bradshaw: Florida law prohibits us from using state funds to fund benefits for same-sex partners.

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Lytle: So then that money would come from the FGCU Foundation? And then the next question is, Florida, I don't think recognizes such unions. How would the legalities of that play out?

Bradshaw: Benefits like salaries and other conditions of work for our faculty, those things are decided at the bargaining table. And we are in bargaining right now with the union, so it would be inappropriate, and probably counterproductive — not probably, certainly counterproductive — for me to say anything that might breach that process.

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Lytle: But if the university and the Board of Trustees want to do this, then there is a way to legally do it?

Bradshaw: There are some community colleges and a couple of our sister universities that have found ways to do that with non-state dollars.

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Lytle: And you're looking into those.

Bradshaw: What we're doing is negotiating a collective bargaining agreement. And one that has to be approved by the Board of Trustees. So that's where we are with that.

And it was a resolution, I should be clear, passed by the Faculty Senate, and certainly we pay attention to that.

But the Faculty Senate is not the bargaining agent, if you will, for the faculty. It's United Faculty of Florida, and that's who we're negotiating with.

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Lytle: It's more complicated that it looks.

Bradshaw: It is. It is.