This seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I’ll say it: The increased minimum scores for Bright Futures is the first step to fix it.
At UF we have a Dean’s List award. This award’s requirement is tiered based on colleges — for instance, a 3.2 GPA in Engineering and 3.75 in CLAS. This needs to be the same restriction for Bright Futures, especially if lawmakers really want to promote more students to become engineers. Scale those down a bit, and you have a more fair standard — an engineer will need to keep a 2.9 to keep 100 percent Bright Futures, while a CLAS student will need, say, a 3.4.
Yes, it’s a lot higher - but it’s also more fair, because engineering classes are unquestionably more involved. Without this, we hit the unfortunate position that engineers will drop out of college due to a difficult first year because they can’t afford school. I’ve seen it happen many times when I was a student.
What will not help is the proposed law of adding a four-year time limit to Bright Futures payoffs. This affects mostly engineering and nursing students, who are often undergrads for more than four years.
If my ideas sound like discrimination, they are — but only to discriminate the hardworking against the free-riders.
