A dispute could be brewing between top Florida higher-education officials and the federal government over an upcoming requirement for U.S. colleges and universities to offer in-state tuition rates to students from certain Pacific islands.
The tuition breaks would apply to students from the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Republic of Palau. The small Pacific Island nations entered into what are known as “Compacts of Free Association” with the U.S. starting in the 1980s.
The tuition change was included in a federal appropriations bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden on March 9.
The provision about in-state tuition would apply to any public colleges or universities that receive funds under a federal law that, in part, provide payments to states to assist them in making financial aid available to students. The 2024 budget law is set to go into effect on July 1.
Under the changes, U.S. colleges and universities would be required to charge tuition to students from the islands “at a rate that is not greater than the rate charged for residents of the state in which such public institution” is located.
State university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues raised the issue during a meeting of the system’s Board of Governors Wednesday, saying that he wanted to put the pending change “on the radar” for higher-education officials.
“This is the first time we’ve been able to find where the federal government has infringed upon state sovereignty in determining who qualifies and does not qualify for in-state tuition,” Rodrigues said.
Currently, a student or their parent or guardian must have “established and maintained legal residence in Florida for at least twelve months before the first day of the academic term” to qualify for in-state tuition, according to the state Department of Education.
Rodrigues said that he has “consulted with chancellors in other states” to ask if they were familiar with the changes or were aware of any similar federal requirements about in-state tuition.
“They were as surprised by it as we were, and they also said there were no examples that their folks could find,” he added.
The Florida chancellor also said he is exploring whether the state has legal standing to challenge the looming policy change.
“We are consulting with one of the top constitutional law firms in the nation to see if there is grounds for us to challenge this,” Rodrigues said.
The island nations’ populations collectively total around 200,000, which is less than the populations of 29 of Florida’s 67 counties. Micronesia’s population is 99,603, the Marshall Islands’ population is 82,011 and Palau’s population is 21,864, according to U.S. Census Bureau data for 2024.
The overall number of students identified as Pacific Islanders attending colleges and universities made up just 0.3 percent of people attending U.S. colleges and universities in the fall of 2022, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. The three island nations set to get tuition breaks make up a small portion of the overall Pacific Islands.
According to the state university system’s website, Florida universities awarded 63 bachelor’s degrees to students identified as “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander” in the 2022-23 school year — just a fraction of one percent of the 71,668 undergraduate degrees awarded to all students.
–Ryan Dailey, News Service of Florida
Laurel says
Republicans have no reasonable plans. Democrats have reasonable plans, but don’t think them out.
Joe D says
Just SOMETHING ELSE to fight over while the REAL turmoil plays out in Congress and around the world….
PRIORITIES PEOPLE….not GRANDSTANDING! But that’s what gets politicians (and political appointees) NOTICED in the NEWS!
And we ALL KNOW….EXPOSURE in the MEDIA is the IMPORTANT thing (that was SARCASM for those that MISSED it).
The dude says
How many folks out of 200,00 do the MAGA idiots in Floriduh think will come here for School? 10-20?
This is definitely not the hill to plant your flag on.
But like Don Quixote, MAGA gotta MAGA. No windmill is too small or inconsequential to tilt at…
Deborah Coffey says
Or, the one for yet another lawsuit that we pay for!
Ray W. says
I am not arguing for or against designating a relatively small portion of a somewhat larger pool of Pacific Island residents as in-state residents for purposes of tuition assistance.
I wish to point out that the three island groups named in the article are all “protectorates”, a status that differs from a commonwealth or a territory. A protectorate has a certain status under the UN Charter. One of its definitions pertains to the ability of a small or undeveloped nation to defend itself from its neighbors.
By definition, the UN must decide whether any nation meets the definition of a protectorate. If it does, the next step is to offer the nation protectorate status. Then, a more powerful nation is offered the opportunity to accept the role of protector.
Decades ago, for a case, I studied the governmental structure of the Federated States of Micronesia.
Originally, under the League of Nations, Micronesia was deemed a nation in need of protection. Japan accepted the role of protector. Japan exploited the islands for resources and built a huge naval base on one of the islands, Truk (now known as Chuuk). That base was, under the strategy of “island hopping”, attacked during WWII in order to destroy its air and naval power, but never invaded. It was allowed to wither on the vine.
After WWII, the UN took Micronesia away from Japan and offered the nation to the U.S. as act as its protector. Congress passed legislation and Truman signed it into law. Our national duty for the last 75 years has been to develop all three protectorates into self-sustaining nations capable of full membership to the UN.
There are four states that comprise the Federated States of Micronesia. The original Micronesian constitution created a weak central government and four stronger state governments. We maintain federal courthouses, complete with U.S. Marshalls, prosecutors and public defenders, on each of the four capital islands. Under Micronesian law, whenever there is a gap in its laws, the U.S. Code is used to fill the gap. But Micronesian law has primary weight throughout the islands. We are spending money (about $100 million per year) to help the Micronesian government and economy thrive.
Over time, after many referendums, bit by bit, the people of the four states have transferred power to the incrementally stronger federal government. Currently, Micronesia is a limited member state to the UN. It can negotiate fishing treaties with its neighbors, including China (with U.S help, it recently boarded a number of Chinese fishing vessels that were illegally fishing within its borders). It has a Coast Guard. It has economic treaties with New Zealand and Australia. But it still can’t defend itself from its neighbors. If China were to invade Micronesia, we are obligated by statute to protect Micronesia.
Here is my point.
If we as a nation accepted by law the duty to assist in the development of the government of any of our three protectorates, does that include aiding in the education of the islanders so that they can eventually reach full-self-government status and, thereby, qualify for admission as a full voting member of the UN? If so, how can we best achieve that duty? Is there a federal statute that grants authority to the federal Department of Education to provide federal funding to the several states in order to help pay to educate qualified islander students so they can better lead their countries in the future?
Who knows if any American politician will be able to elevate the issue into a “pestilential” partisan member of faction argument? Time will tell. Mayber hyperbole at the expense of truth with flourish. Perhaps Micronesian students will learn to avoid attending any Florida institution, to the detriment of other Florida students, who might benefit from interacting with them, from learning alongside them.
Laurel says
Ray W.: Thank you for the information. I was not aware. However, maybe it would be useful, like in the TV series “Northern Exposure” with the character Dr. Joel Fleischman, the students mandatorily serve the pubic that helped pay for their education before heading back home.
Ray W. says
Good point, thank you.
For that matter, were a Floriday university to offer tuition assistance to protectorate students, regardless of the validity of the new federal statute’s terms, and were the students to excel in their studies, should Florida offer post-graduate positions to them and use their newly enhanced research skills to our advantage before they return home to lead their nation?
To me, the old adage that the best exercise is to help another person up might apply.
The British made it integral to their foreign policy to offer education to the sons of colonial tribal chiefs. Many African, Indian and Asian students were educated at the best of the British universities; they returned to serve as judges, educators, ministers of government, and military officers. The fact that the British fanned the flames of ethnic hatreds by choosing sons of certain tribal leaders and not those of other tribal leaders to disastrous and violent end effect after the British left the colonies to grow on their own does not have to be repeated in American efforts to educate young potential leaders of our protectorate populations.
Mr. Tristam perhaps said it best some 20 years ago when he referred to Middle Eastern political strife as fomented by “tribes with flags.” In his youth, Mr. Tristam lived with the effects of colonial policies gone terribly and violently awry. Lebanon was not ready to govern itself when France left. Beirut became the Paris of the Mediterranean under French influence, and it remained so for a short while after the French left. It is the garbage pit of the Mediterranean now, with a destroyed port, a demolished city and a desperate and destitute populace.
What has been called the Palestinian “diaspora” reverberates throughout the world, with portents of future disaster due to official Israeli policy towards Palestinian Arabs and Hamas policy towards Israeli Jews emerging each new day.
I recall decades ago reading an English language editorial section of a Paraguayan newspaper. In the early days of the internet, I used to select a country at random and find an English language newspaper; there was a site with links to English language newspapers from all over the world. I would read the editorial sections. Concern for hacking threats put an end to that practice. But anyone could learn a lot from reading what was important to people living in other regions of the world.
One of the Paraguayan editorials debated a U.S. proposal to jointly build a hardened military airbase in the western interior of Paraguay. The region formed part of a lawless triangle between southwestern Brazil and northeastern Chile, as I recall. Part of the Palestinian diaspora had immigrated to the region; it had prospered by allegedly engaging in the drug trade. The U.S. wanted the base, in part, to house an FBI and DEA contingent. The editorialist informed readers that the Palestinian community, some 20,000 strong, was illegally sending large sums of money back to Palestine.
The issue of the cluster that is Israeli policy after the Nakba towards the dispossessed indigenous Palestinian Arab populace, which followed the cluster that was Arab policy before the Nakba (declaration of war against the indigenous Israeli Jewish populace) when Israel declared independence, has tentacles that ensnare so many other peoples all over the world; it’s not just the Middle East that suffers.
Certain FlaglerLive readers think that an eternally vengeful argument can be won through use of their flawed reasonings. Israel started it and the Palestinians are right, some stupidly claim. Palestinians started it and the Israelis are right, others stupidly claim. What fools they are. Neither Israeli Jewish reactionary factions nor Palestinian Arab religious extremist factions want to win any argument. They don’t care which of the two stupid FlaglerLive commenter factions win; they care only for the killing of each other without interference from the outside world. Winning would be a bonus, not the goal. Ceaseless mutual vengeful murder is the goal.
“We will go it alone”, Netanyahu blusters as the current administration balks at aiding militarily any further wholesale slaughter of innocents, as if the Biden threat was the first by an American president.
In 2021, Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan years, wrote a position paper about the numerous times during the two Reagan administrations that Reagan threatened Israeli leaders over numerous IDF attacks throughout the region. Reagan, per Korb, allowed a number of UN declarations against Israel to pass. In 1981, Reagan suspended the sale of F-16s to Israel after the IDF attacked an Iraqi nuclear facility; he then approved the sale of AWACs aircraft to Saudi Arabia over intense Israeli and American Jewish opposition. Korb writes of other instances of Reagan demanding that Israel withdraw its forces else Israel face other arms suspensions.
Despite this history of Republican responses to Israeli attacks by withholding arms and threats to withhold arms, and selling arms to its enemies, we just might soon see the extent of the stupidity of the political absurdist branch of what once was a conservative Republican leadership over Biden’s announcing of plans to withhold certain arms to Israel after the Israeli government rejected demands that it employ less terrible forms of slaughter of innocent Palestinians in furtherance of its valid desire to destroy Hamas.
Oy, vey!
Laurel says
Ray W.: We’ll, we did get to see Margery Green get slam dunked on her face by her fellow Republicans, so there is a glimmer of hope.