As Lake Wauburg glistened in the morning sun, a faint fire flickered in the nearby Cypress Lodge's stone fireplace and a breakfast spread including smoked salmon and maple pecan pastries sat partially eaten, UF's Board of Trustees, the university's highest governing body, got down to the gritty business of budget cuts.
Prompted by UF President Bernie Machen to decide where UF's priorities should lie when it makes millions of dollars in cuts this summer, the board told Machen they want UF's mission to focus more on graduate education.
"Do we wanna be the best undergraduate university in the nation, or do we wanna be the best research university in the nation?" asked trustee Earl Powell. "That's the question here."
Powell said the graduate programs that attract the most grant money should be at the core of UF's mission.
"Because the rubber meets the road when the government sends you money to produce programs," he said, adding that UF has no trouble attracting undergraduate students.
trustee Joelen Merkel agreed.
"Undergraduates don't really need our focus that we've given them the last, you know, eight years," Merkel said. "They are going to be here."
Trustee Roland Daniels argued focusing on graduate programs would also benefit undergraduates.
"If we can prioritize in terms of the research mission that we have, the undergraduates will improve as well in time," he said.
But trustee and Student Body President Kevin Reilly said he was concerned trustees were taking UF's undergraduates for granted and said he didn't want UF to lose its identity.
"I think the undergraduate culture is what drives a lot of the campus culture," he said. "I think if we lose that mission too much we lose a lot of what is the University of Florida."
Machen assured trustees that UF wasn't abandoning its undergraduates.
"We are not walking away from a commitment to undergraduate education," he said. "We can't."
But he said the state's community colleges are offering more and more four-year degrees, tempting potential undergraduates with bargain prices.
"It's a Kmart education, but they are gonna do it," he said, adding UF could compete against them but questioned why it would want to.
"Why don't we move on to a more specialized market?" he asked.
Machen said the move would involve expanding UF's reach throughout the state with new research centers.
Trustees agreed, however, that UF's new persona could be a tough sell.
"I think 95 percent of the people in this state have no appreciation for graduate education," said trustee Dianna Morgan.
Now that the board has stated its wishes, the focus shifts back to UF's colleges and administrative units. Their budget proposals are due April 1, at which point Machen said he will have to make sure their priorities match those of the trustees, who take the final vote on the budget submitted by Machen in May.
"If the college, for example, wants to do something that's inconsistent with what the trustees want, then I'm not gonna put it forward," he said during a break in the meeting.
"But I think we're gonna have plenty of things that fit within what the trustees want."
