The Problem With $100,000 College Degrees: Gov. DeSantis Details Issues With Some Degrees - 11/05/26

With that being said, the work continues and we are here at Polk State to talk about and give an award for workforce education, which has been something that we've worked very, very hard on since I've been governor. And now it's kind of a little bit more in vogue. When I became governor eight years ago, it was still a college focus. Not that there's anything wrong with going to a university, but we really believe that vocational skills, technical education could provide a pathway to prosperity for a lot of young people without having to take on mountainous amounts of debt. Four-year universities throughout the country, if you look in the last 30, 40 years, how many students have gone to these things and ended up very deep in debt? Only to end up having a degree that puts them right back in a job they could have had at a high school. A lot of them don't even get the degree. And that $100,000, $120,000 in debt is a millstone around their neck. It makes it harder for them to realize their dreams. We don't want to do that. So in Florida, even though we're saying correctly that a four-year brick-and-ivy university isn't the only way you can succeed, We're also making it so that our in-state residents do Do not go, not only into punishing debt, but really don't go into any debt at all. So since I've been governor, the in-state tuition rate is exactly the same today as it was in January of 2019. It's not gone up one cent. We have the lowest in-state tuition in the United States of America, and it's not even close. That said, we have Bright Futures scholarships. If you're good enough to get into University of Florida nowadays, it is likely that you qualify for Bright Futures. And so the kids that do get full tuition or 75% tuition, depending on the test scores and the grades and all the criteria, so then they end up basically just paying to live room and board for that. Even the ones that don't get Bright Futures, 75% of our in-state students do not have any debt when they graduate from a Florida university here in the state. That's incredible. And of the 25% of in-state students that do, the average debt that they end up taking out is about $6,300. Not that you want to be in $6,300, but that gets you like a meal plan at places like NYU and all this stuff. So let's just put that in perspective. So I'm proud that we've made university education affordable. I think it's been a tragedy how deep in debt so many of these students have gone in over the years. They were sold the bill of goods by some of these universities that somehow these degrees were magical. You had to mortgage your whole future just to get that degree in zombie studies. And then, you know what, you get it, and the seas don't part, and you're left holding the bag. That has been a problem, no doubt about it. I think people are wising up to it more. You're not going to have that problem in Florida and universities, but... It also raised the question, and we laid the marker down when I first became governor, there are other pathways where you can be successful, education, training pathways, and you're not lesser of a young person because you choose those pathways other than going to a traditional four-year brick-and-ivy university. I mean, the academics at University of Florida have gone up. It's very rigorous now from what it would have been maybe 40 years ago. I don't know if the football's gone up, as it would have been, certainly not under Spurrier, as someone who was there for the Florida-Georgia game. That was quite a shellacking, and so it is what it is, right? But it's great. But even with that. These pathways are meaningful. These pathways have made a difference. So no state has done more than we have. Since I've been governor, we set the goal to be number one in workforce education by 2030. We achieve that by 2026. So four years ahead of schedule, Florida is the number one state in America for workforce education, and the amount of resources that we've put into this have been extraordinary. Nobody has matched our dedication and our ingenuity and creativity when it comes to that. And let's just look at the results. We have a 70% increase in apprenticeships in Florida since I've been governor. We have a 46% increase in registered apprenticeship programs, which obviously can have more than one apprentice in them, 112% increase in registered pre-apprenticeship programs. You know, we've got kids in, like, middle and high school who are going through all this stuff and getting skills. It's really incredible. 57% increase in total apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship program combined, and then a massive increase of 153% in apprenticeship occupations. So that's meaningful. That's providing very important skills. So that brings us here today. Polk State College. is going to receive a grant through our Workforce Development Capitalization Incentive Grant Program to support its Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Applications Program. So unmanned aircraft, so these are unmanned aircraft systems, commonly known as drones, are changing how industries operate, and so what they're going to be doing is using the drone technology to support operations in agriculture. And Stassi will talk about some of the stuff they get into like soil and this and that. And it's a way, you know, agriculture's tough because you're at the mercy of elements and there's ups and there's downs to it as we've seen in Florida certainly over the years. So this is gonna be value added and Polk State's really gonna be leading the charge on it. And it's a great part of the state to have this.