Matt Appleman weighs in with some interesting news out of Florida. 

A year after Texas Governor Rick Perry challenged their colleges to offer four-year degrees for just $10,000 (not per year); Florida Governor Rick Scott has proposed the $10k challenge to the Sunshine State. His proposal was slightly different than Perry’s: Scott demanded all of the twenty-three state colleges (formerly called community colleges), which previously offered four-year programs, to offer such programs in at least a few majors. This does not include the five state colleges that do not offer four-year programs or the prestigious State University System (FSU, University of Florida, University of South Florida, and others). Regardless, it is a very noble idea that is more realistic than Perry’s proposal. By January 2013, all twenty-three state colleges accepted Scott’s challenge. Ten of them will start enrolling students in 2013. An additional eight will start enrolling students into the special program in 2014. The other three are still finalizing their plans: Florida Gateway, Lake-Sumter, and Valencia. In addition, Pasco-Hernando Community College recently became the twenty-fourth to accept the challenge and will start offering four-year degrees for the first time in 2014. Politifact.com, a fact-checking website, has heavily criticized Governor Scott’s statement that twenty-four colleges have accepted the challenge because only ten will start this year and none of them will offer the program for all majors. They are missing the point. Governor Scott has gotten a commitment from several colleges to decrease their price-tag at a time when nearly every college is increasing tuition. In fact, for the past several years it has been a significant challenge to simply ask higher education institutions to simply not increase tuition over inflation. Since 1985, the overall consumer price index (inflation) has risen 115% while college tuition has risen nearly 500%. So perhaps we should applaud Governor Rick Scott of Florida and Rick Perry of Texas for persuading some colleges to actually decrease their tuition.