DeSantis: Florida lays down gauntlet on H1B visas, tenured professors, ‘woke grants’ at state universities
Gov. DeSantis announces changes at universities
Governor Ron DeSantis gives an update on an audit done on the state's universities.
TAMPA, Fla. - On Wednesday, Governor Ron DeSantis was at the University of South Florida to discuss DOGE-style audits at state universities.
Changing tenure
What we know:
During a press conference on Wednesday morning, DeSantis said all tenured professors must now undergo review every five years and can be terminated for poor performance.
"You need to teach. You need to do research to produce, so those performance metrics are very important," DeSantis said. "There have been a lot of unproductive professors who have been filtered out, but we’ve also paired that with giving money to the universities and the presidents can bring in people and pay them."
"We have to set the mission for these schools that are in the best interest in the state of Florida and that’s giving the best value to taxpayers in Florida," the governor added.
H1B Visas
The governor said the state’s team also looked at the use of foreign visas such as H1Bs.
On Wednesday, DeSantis said he was directing the Florida Board of Governors to pull the plug on the use of H1B visas in state universities.
What they're saying:
"It turns out these tech companies will fire Americans and hire H1B at a discount and they are basically indentured servants because they go in and they are almost all from one country. They come in with these brokers who make a fortune of this with arbitrage. They bring them in and they are indentured to the company. So, the company can basically pay them low and they say no, we got to do this. You have to prove there are no Americans. They will put an ad in the classified sections of a newspaper. Nobody reads that section of the newspaper…It’s all become a total scam."
When Florida looked at it in the universities, DeSantis said it found that there were H1B computer application coordinators from China, assistant professors from China, a public policy professor from China, and an assistant swim coach from Spain on an H1B visa.
"Are you kidding me? We can’t produce an assistant swim coach from this country," the governor asked.
DeSantis said the state also found a bio-analytical core director from Poland, a psychologist and counselor from the U.K., an athletic department graphic designer from Canada, an athletic operations and communications coordinator from Trinidad, manager of marketing and communications from Albania, a data analyst, coastal research specialist from China, and an assistant director of assessment accreditation, to name a few.
"Why are we bringing people in to assess our accreditation on an H1B visa. We can’t do that with our own people?" DeSantis asked.
"I don’t understand how is that specialized knowledge that only someone from these places can do. A $40,000 a year job working as the assistant at the athletic department? That’s an abuse of this whole idea," DeSantis added.
"We need to make sure that our citizens here in Florida are first in line for job opportunities," the governor explained. "If there are things that the universities need that somehow they just can’t find in Florida, to me, they, of all employers, would be the ones most responsible for why they can’t find what they need. We’re churning out a lot of people. This should not be that difficult to do…This is basically, in some respects, cheap labor that they are bringing in to try to save money."
Grants
What they're saying:
The state also analyzed the grants and the governor said it either repurposed or canceled more than $33M in DEI-related grants that were made to Florida’s public universities.
"It’s basically hundreds of thousands of dollars focusing on race, ethnicity and different things," DeSantis explained. "As a Florida resident, if you are at a school, you should have the opportunity to do different things, and it shouldn’t depend on race or ethnicity."
"We’re laying down the gauntlet on H1B visas. We’ve laid down the gauntlet now for many months on the woke grants and that’s going to continue," the governor stated. "We’re going to ferret out all of those."
What's next:
The state evaluated the efficiencies of how its universities operate. The findings will be presented next week at USF.
Florida is the first and only state to implement performance-based funding, according to Division of Bond Finance Director Ben Watkins.
The efficiency study looked at data from audited financial statements, student data, and personnel information from the universities to calculate ratios or performance metrics related to efficiency and productivity.
DeSantis also said that the DOGE audits will continue at Florida universities.
The Source: This article was written with information presented during a press conference at USF on Wednesday morning.