Florida’s 28 state colleges secured access to better health care benefits from the Florida Legislature this year, and leaders hope that will make it easier to recruit and retain faculty. Assuming Gov. Ron DeSantis signs it, the legislation puts state college employees in the same group health care program as other state employees, including those at Florida’s public universities.
Starting in January, that access can save state college workers as much as $1,000 per month in costs, says Pensacola State College President Ed Meadows, who also leads the system’s Council of Presidents. And that’s important because the state college system is tasked with quickly creating and implementing certificate and degree programs that match regional workforce needs.
Those college certificates can range from commercial trucking to FAA-certified aviation mechanics. The system’s 615,000 students earn more than 120,000 credentials each year. The student body is more of a cross-section than the universities see, Meadows says — with plenty of students just out of high school and others in the workforce looking to either advance in their jobs or find new career options.
Hiring and retaining talented faculty despite the benefits gap has proven to be “one of the most challenging aspects” for the Florida College System, Meadows says. Getting on par with other state employees “will be a major incentive to attract and retain the talent that we need in these highly technical areas.”
Business needs vary throughout the state, he says, with a chronic nursing shortage representing an example of something all communities face and all the colleges work to address. Cybersecurity and artificial intelligence similarly “are becoming even more important across the state as we look at the kind of industries that are hoping to move to Florida or hoping to expand.”
His school, Pensacola State College, graduated 236 nurses last year. And the school is also “jump starting” a respiratory therapy assistant program after a hospital alerted the school to “a huge vacuum in Northwest Florida.”
It also has programs to serve the hospitality industry and Northwest Florida’s booming home construction industry. Welders today must have computer science training since it’s often done robotically. “That’s the way of the world in advanced manufacturing,” he says. “You’re talking about machines that are doing the work that once was done by human hands.”
While many students come to school with a career path in mind, assessment tests are offered to help people identify careers that might interest them.
Pensacola State College even has a construction science program inside Century Correctional Institution to prepare inmates for jobs once they complete their sentences. In April, construction started on an assembly line at the prison to manufacture tiny homes to address a shortage of affordable housing.