June 2025 | Michael Fechter
It felt a little goofy, but Orlando resident Christopher Ward recently found himself playing Edward Elgar’s 1901 composition Pomp & Circumstance March No. 1 on his phone. You might know it as the graduation song. Ward, 33, was just a few weeks away from “walking across that stage” with his bachelor’s degree in construction management from Seminole State College, the culmination of six years of non-stop studying while working full time.
“I’m like, ‘Who does this? Who listens to this music?’” he says. “But it’s so pleasing, and it sounds so surreal, like I’m almost there.”
Ward originally enrolled at Florida A&M University after high school but couldn’t afford to continue. He then fell into a series of what he calls “dead-end jobs with no career path” including working overnights in a warehouse. He used to fall asleep during his 3 a.m. “lunch break” until one day he woke up and realized, “I can’t continue to do this. This is too much. I was doing it for five years and for some reason that day it just felt like this is not normal, so some- thing had to change.”
The hardest part, he says, was just taking the step to enroll. After that, balancing work and school became “a natural flow. And also, I was hungry for success and that was the main driver, knowing I don’t want to go back to overnights.”
Ward had seven job offers in the construction industry a year before he earned his associate in science degree. And he worked full time as an assistant superintendent with Apopka-based general contractor FINFROCK after opting to continue at Seminole State to pursue a bachelor’s degree. When he spoke with Florida Trend, he was onsite at an eight-story, 401-unit condominium near completion adjacent to Altamonte Springs’ Cranes Roost Park.
Ward is the kind of student Florida’s 28 state colleges are made to serve. He was looking for job skills and couldn’t afford to be a full-time student. He’s also the kind of student that helped make Seminole State a finalist for this year’s $1-million Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence.
Aspen judges look at a host of data, including retention, completion and transfer rates to the state’s universities. Seminole State also provided data on its part-time students older than 25, like Ward. Aspen also compares graduates with unemployment insurance records to gauge average wages for graduates.
“At every stage of the process, the Florida colleges show quite well,” says Josh Wyner, the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program executive director. Since 2011, four Florida colleges — Valencia, Miami-Dade, Santa Fe and Indian River — have won seven prizes, and Bro- ward College has been a finalist five times.
That success is due to a combination of structural advantages and “phenomenal” and creative leaders, Wyner says. Tuition at Seminole State and all the state colleges costs roughly half of a state university’s and hasn’t increased in a dozen years. The colleges are spread throughout the state, making access easier. Sanford-based Seminole State also has campuses in Altamonte Springs, Oviedo and Heathrow.
Ward was taught by professors who still work in the construction business, and he walked across that stage with no student loan debt.
Florida is a growth state, but that can lead to complacency as much as excellence, Wyner says. Florida colleges manage to be responsive to business community needs while also building systems that foster cooperation, rather than competition, with the more prestigious, bigger-budgeted State University System. That includes agreeing to a limited number of bachelor’s degree programs at state colleges, like Ward’s, that couldn’t have happened if the University of Central Florida wasn’t on board.
UCF offers perhaps the best example of cooperation between universities and state colleges. Florida has had a “2+2” promise to state college students for generations: If you earn your associate’s degree, you will get into a state university. There’s no guarantee, however, that it will be your top choice.
Nearly 20 years ago, UCF, Valencia, Seminole State, Eastern Florida State and Lake-Sumter State colleges created “DirectConnect,” guaranteeing people who earn their AAs at those schools entry into UCF. UCF’s enrollment has swelled to nearly 70,000 since then, and the transfer students perform as well as those who started there, Wyner says. “DirectConnect is a verb in high schools now,” meaning if you ask a senior his or her plans, they’re likely to say, “I’m going to DirectConnect.”
“It’s that powerful of a pathway,” he says.
It has expanded to include the College of Central Florida and Daytona State College. And other Florida universities, including Florida A&M and the University of South Florida, have created similar partnerships. But “there is nothing like this anywhere else in the country,” says Seminole State President Georgia Lorenz. Other universities just aren’t as flexible or open.
Running on Fumes
Florida colleges are succeeding with relatively modest state funding, Wyner says. “I have been a huge admirer of the state colleges in Florida ... and I’m worried that, without (additional) investments, the greatness that is the state colleges could deteriorate.”
Per student spending has decreased over the years, from $9,549 before the 2008 recession to $8,316 today, data from the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College shows. California spends $10,963 per student. Texas spends only $4,170, but ad valorem taxes generally unavailable to Florida colleges added another $6,478 per student.
Overall state college funding has increased 46% since 2013, while the state university budgets doubled, the colleges say.
“It provides, frankly, very little incentive for them to improve,” says Davis Jenkins, a senior research scholar at the Columbia University center, “but somehow they still turn out very good results.”
Sometimes that means delaying needed repairs and renovations. The state used to have a specific maintenance fund dubbed “sum of the digits,” but after using COVID relief money, it hasn’t restored the funding, says Seminole State College President Georgia Lorenz.
“We really need that restored for the stuff that we just have to do,” Lorenz says. “Roofs, sealing of buildings, fixing sidewalks. A lot of the colleges were founded in the ’60s so our original buildings are all aging together. They need major work, and we need dollars to do that.”
The colleges have turned to requesting Public Education Capital Outlay, or PECO money, funded by Florida’s gross receipts tax, but that is supposed to go to new construction. The state’s 2024-25 Capital Projects Plan includes $100 million for the state colleges, including $10 million to build an addition to a workforce training center at St. Johns River State College and $2.4 million to remodel a nursing building at Florida SouthWestern.
In addition, the colleges asked Florida lawmakers this year to increase their annual budget by $200 million to be divided among all 28 schools. It comes on the heels of a $100-million increase in recurring state funding in 2023, which the colleges say helped lead to a 5.4% enrollment increase and a 15% increase in industry certifications last year.
Jenkins, co-author of the 2015 book Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success, has worked with numerous Florida colleges and sees the investments as worthwhile. “We love them because they’re very innovative,” he says.
Community colleges were designed to be accessible, Jenkins says, helping students to either get a job or transfer to a university. Florida colleges have moved far beyond access, reorganizing themselves into workforce pipelines, Jenkins says. “The return to the taxpayer is enormous.”
When Jeff Allbritten came to Florida SouthWestern State College to teach in 1999, workforce training “was an anathema to this institution.” He became its president in 2012. Now, Florida SouthWestern has 4,485 people enrolled in associate in science degree programs designed for direct entry in the workforce. Another 865 people are in certification programs.
Funding for Florida’s state colleges has increased 46% since 2013. University budgets have doubled during the same period.
The programs are designed in concert with the area’s business community and advisory boards that ensure the curriculum prepares students to fill needed jobs. That’s especially true with nursing and the allied health fields, for which virtually all the state colleges have programs.
As a sign of both the need and the confidence hospitals have in the colleges’ training, AdventHealth has committed $5 million to help Seminole State build a new 108,000-sq.-ft. training center for nursing, respiratory therapy and more. The state gave the school about $4 million last year for design work, but another $56 million is needed to get it built by summer 2027. Advent’s pledge also aims to persuade lawmakers that the program is worth the investment, Lorenz says.
Fast Facts about Florida’s ‘Great 28’
648,943: Enrollment
105,565: Degrees/Certificates awarded annually
45,923: AA degrees
14,377: AS degrees
45,265: Certificates
Source: 2023-24 Florida College System Fact Book
Delivering Value
The Florida Department of Education announced $62 million in grants last fall to support workforce development programs at school districts and within the state college system, which followed $100 million in state spending the year before. For the colleges, the money will help support an array of training programs in everything from artificial intelligence to HVAC to agribusiness to semiconductors.
Since 2019, career and technical education (CTE) programs in Florida increased by nearly 60% with 480,000 students, the state says. Valencia College, which won the Aspen Prize in 2011, has an accelerated skills training program that “is the best I’ve ever seen in the country of short-term credentials turning into decent-wage jobs,” Wyner says. Valencia offers 53 certifications at six locations in Orange and Osceola counties in a variety of industries, including transportation and logistics, manufacturing, construction and health care. It awards more than 1,000 certifications per year, a majority of which are free to students.
The colleges pride themselves on being nimble, says Allbritten, who also leads the Council of Presidents, the Florida College System’s policy arm. If a company is considering relocating or expanding, the colleges stand poised to build or enhance training programs. “We want to make sure we have a finger on the pulse of what’s coming, and how can we be part of the initial team to help court” business, he says.
At North Florida State College in rural Madison County, for example, 11 new certificate programs launched last year alone. North Florida has the system’s smallest enrollment yet covers the widest geographic area, a six-county swath of rural communities like Madison, Perry and Live Oak. It’s an area that’s been battered by hurricanes Idalia and Helene and where the biggest employer, Georgia-Pacific (GP) Foley Cellulose, closed its Perry mill in 2023, leaving 525 people out of work.
College staffers called all students after the storms to ensure they were okay, and the school set up a food pantry offering clothes, groceries, baby supplies and pet food to help them stay on course.
President John Grosskopf is retiring at the end of the year after 17 years leading the school. A commercial driver’s license program tailored to meet the region’s needs stands out among his favorites. CDL programs are pretty common, he says, but North Florida’s is geared toward the area’s logging industry, which often involves hauling loads from muddy, wooded areas “which is a different skill set” from driving paved roads. Students learn by doing, with logging companies taking the money they would have paid to a commercial hauler and donating it to a scholarship fund that keeps the program going.
While the number of certifications is impressive, each truck driver hired after completing a CDL program, each AA recipient who continues getting an education, is a win for the state, Jenkins says. “When you can get a first-generation, low-income student to get an AS (degree) or transfer relatively low-cost in a major to USF, Florida International, and to get a bachelor’s degree by the time they’re 25? The return to the taxpayer is enormous,” Jenkins says.
That certainly is true for a welding certification program offered by Northwest Florida State College in Niceville. It has a 100% job placement rate, with jobs paying as much as $10,000 a month, says President Mel Ponder. Other programs, including nursing, first responders, teachers and hospitality management, have strong job placement rates, too.
“We are very close to the hiring managers. We are very close to their needs,” Ponder says. “We see them at the chambers, we see them at the economic development business meetings. We work with our school district superintendents. So we hear all the needs.”
But often, the programs rely on business support and other private fundraising to operate. “We’re not going to ever achieve excellence without external funding,” Allbritten says.
Speak to any of the college presidents, and they’ll tout the job placement rates and AA transfers to universities. And they will tout the relatively small number of students who require loans to get there.
“They’re delivering value,” Wyner says. “Students have a real likelihood of having a credential that leads to a good job. They’re likely to have a credential that leads directly to a bachelor’s degree. And whenever you deliver value, students will keep coming.”
Educational Investment
Per student spending varies significantly across different state college systems. Florida spends almost twice what Texas does, but about 24% less than California does.
Department of Education Workforce Capitalization Grants
St. Petersburg College — $4 million for semiconductor programs and clean room technologies
Miami Dade College — $1.4 million for applied artificial intelligence and aviation operations programs
Santa Fe College — $1.35 million for diesel systems and master automotive service technology
Tallahassee State College — $721,662 for firefighter/ emergency medical technology, heating, ventilation, air conditioning/refrigeration and marine services programs
College of Central Florida — $661,959 for agribusiness management, landscape and horticulture, environmental science and help desk support technology
Broward College — $263,000 for aviation mechanics programs
College of Florida Keys —$93,200 for marine engineering, management and seamanship A.S. programs
Source: Florida Department of Education
Figuring It Out
Florida SouthWestern State College President Jeff Allbritten.
One key to the Florida colleges’ success dates back decades — a common course numbering system that ensures students that their general education class credits will be accepted if they transfer to a state university. According to the Florida Department of Education, the idea developed in the late 1960s when registrars and advisors noticed transfer students’ credits weren’t being honored. “By 1976, all public institution courses were entered into the common course numbering system,” a 2023 DOE report says.
“To me,” says Florida SouthWestern State College President Jeff Allbritten, it “is the single greatest achievement probably in the history of Florida higher ed. ... That assures the kids that are starting, no matter where they’re at, they’re not going to have to play a game and wonder, ‘Gee, did I meet that math requirement?’”
As time passes and curricula changes, the system requires “maintenance” by committees including state college and university representatives, Allbritten says.
Five decades later, other big states continue to reject credits that transfer students earned from other public higher education outlets. California will start rolling out its own common course numbering system this fall, a process that could take three years.
First for Free
When Jacqueline Perez-Tavera graduated from James Madison Preparatory High School outside Perry last month, she became the first member of her family to earn a college degree.
Perez-Tavera, 18, dual-enrolled at North Florida College, completing her associate’s degree while still in high school. Under Florida’s dual enrollment program, her tuition was free. And she even made money working at the college’s recruitment office, handling inquiries, leading tours and more.
Along the way she developed time management and study skills she’ll need when she heads to Florida State University. Her sister Judith, a high school junior, also is a dual-enrollment student set to be the family’s second college graduate.
Dual enrollment growth is among his proudest achievements, says North Florida College President John Grosskopf. “The number of families that this has taken out of generational poverty is really amazing,” he says.
More than 60,000 Florida high schoolers participate in dual enrollment programs each year, a College Access Network report published earlier this year says. At North Florida, more than a third of the 1,838 students are dual enrollees, earning free college credit while still completing high school.
Equally important, dual enrollment students have interacted with college advisors and faculty and developed confidence they can perform at that level.
Perez says she looked into dual enrollment at an advisor’s suggestion. She learned a lot about the demands of college coursework. “I wasn’t the type of kid to study. I would just like glance at it and go into the test. It wasn’t until I started to take dual enrollment that I realized, ‘OK, you have to study for this stuff.’ And I did.”
She also got a taste of campus life she had no idea existed at North Florida College, joining a gardening club and attending on-campus events. In hindsight, she thinks it was the best path she could have chosen.
She mentions a friend who took AP courses rather than going dual enrollment. “I’m 18. I’m already graduating with an AA. Now he’s spending money ... to do something I’m already doing, and I get it for free. ... It was an option for him, it just wasn’t promoted.”