An offer for Governor Rick Scott.

All twelve of Florida’s state universities are asking him and the Legislature to approve an additional $118 million in state spending for them.  In return, the schools say they will freeze tuition costs.

Gov. Scott praised the proposal saying he looks forward to working with the university presidents on a budget.  He has opposed tuition increases but supported $300 million in spending reductions for the universities this year.

University of North Florida president John Delaney tells WOKV the schools are trying to “make it work” for Florida students.

“We just think the future of the state’s gonna be tied to the kids who we graduate from college,” he said. “You know you make about thirty thousand dollars a year, more if you can get a college degree, and that just pumps money back into the economy.”

When talking about the $118 million, he mentioned that Florida’s $25 billion operating budget and $65 billion total budget.

Delaney says all the schools except UNF have laid off hundreds of faculty members, so there are a lot of classes that students can’t take to graduate.

“We actually rolled our enrollment back a thousand,” he said of UNF.  “So there were a lot of kids that we would have gladly accepted if we had the money to be able to teach them.”

The offer by the schools is a reversal from their 2008 pledge to increase tuition by fifteen percent every year until the schools match the national average tuition.