We don’t often think about illegal immigrants regarding higher education. They are usually discussed at the primary and secondary scholastic levels and, of course, within the workforce and welfare rolls. Nonetheless, roughly 6,672 noncitizens were enrolled across Florida’s 40 state institutions last year, taking spots that should have gone to legal residents.
Florida has 12 public universities and 28 colleges across the peninsula. With an estimated population of 23,462,518 by the U.S. Census Bureau and continued projected growth, those campuses increasingly have precious little space. That makes it even harder for high school applicants to get in, particularly at the University of Miami, which has an acceptance rate of 19%; Florida A&M University, with a 21% acceptance rate; the University of Florida, with a 24% acceptance rate; and Florida State University, also with 24%.
To restore genuine competition for these collegiate slots, the Board of Governors voted earlier this month to prohibit illegal immigrant residents from attending these 40 institutions beginning next year, a move that will benefit lawful applicants and help students and taxpayers alike. Here’s how.
It opens fair access to truly eligible applicants
According to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, undergraduate enrollment at U.S. colleges shrank by 13% to 15% in the decade leading up to 2020, a drop of roughly 2.3 to 2.7 million students. But those drops are primarily in blue states.
Although college enrollment is down in parts of the country, not all universities are experiencing such application shortages. Classrooms and lecture halls in red states have finite capacity, and those limited seats should go to truly qualified applicants.
For instance, applications to the Florida State University System rose about 41% from 2018 to 2024, while total enrollment rose only about 2.4%. However, even the least-selective campuses reject at least one in four applicants. That means a spot given to an illegal immigrant is a spot that’s not awarded to a lawful citizen who’s met the academic requirements.
So, for capacity-strained flagships and regional colleges, the most direct operational benefit is a smaller admission pool that better aligns with the legal residents the state funds the university system to educate.
Additionally, state subsidies no longer help finance unlawful presence. This new law bolsters the 2025 repeal of in-state tuition for unauthorized residents, because those individuals could nevertheless attend, provided they paid out-of-state rates. If they did, that still took away state-subsidized seats.
It helps ensure meritorious credentials for employers
Victor Davis Hanson and others have pointed to anecdotal evidence of industry-leading companies in tech, finance, law, and more rejecting graduates from elite universities who remain woefully uneducated despite their degrees. Illegal immigrants who do not have legal authorization to work only exacerbate the problem of a tainted employment pool.
What’s more, colleges granting degrees to illegal immigrants only worsen the personal financial situations of foreign nationals, because they do not qualify for subsidies and must pay the full out-of-state rates. Even if they don’t take out loans, paying their own way to earn a degree they weren’t legally eligible for in the first place, and then sending them into the marketplace where they have no legal right to work, certainly doesn’t help them. It only adds more burden to the welfare system.
By barring illegal immigrants from applying and attending, universities will put their resources into legitimate students who worked so hard to earn their degrees, playing by the rules.
It helps maintain taxpayer fiduciary
Taxpayers in Florida contribute approximately $3.9 billion to $5 billion annually in direct state funding to support the SUS. That means the policy aligns state funding with lawfully present students and reduces political exposure in seats with limited capacity. Rather than generating new revenue or budget growth, it simply reallocates existing capacity.
For instance, prior to the 2025 policy change, around 6,500 students used the in-state waiver across public colleges and universities, paying roughly $26.7 million in residential tuition and fees, WUSF lamented.
Other leftist news organizations have done the same, urging sympathy for the substantial revenue loss, arguing the money stream came from enrollees who paid for a perfectly legal service. That misses the point, because those dollars were paid by illegal immigrants who shouldn’t have been in the country in the first place. So, it’s like saying a bar can serve booze to a patron who’s already been arrested for DUI, because alcohol is legal.
Regardless, that waiver program has since been eliminated, forcing postsecondary institutions to give up unethical profits that skirted immigration laws while simultaneously preventing lawful students from being accepted.
It puts legal voters first
By prohibiting illegal immigrants from attending Florida’s 40 public universities and colleges, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and the Board of Governors are helping those same institutions stay lawfully compliant, benefitting meritorious applicants, and ensuring taxpayer money is used to educate legal citizens who also vote.
Conversely, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), campaigning for president, has proudly stated California offers access to higher education “regardless of immigration status,” something he thinks will win him support. But the majority of taxpayers disagree. Especially when it comes to funding in-state tuition. This isn’t a new sentiment, either. It goes back at least to the DREAM Act era, when Rasmussen polling showed strong opposition (around 71%) to in-state tuition rates for children of illegal immigrants.
Public opinion didn’t change in the years following. A 2009 Public Policy Polling survey in North Carolina found 74% opposed allowing illegal immigrants to attend community colleges and 75% opposed allowing them to attend public universities in the UNC system.
Just two years later, a 2011 Rasmussen Reports national poll of likely voters found 81% opposed making illegal immigrants eligible for in-state tuition at public colleges and universities; only 12% supported it.
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Even as recently as 2024, a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll found 73% of Iowans supported requiring students to be U.S. citizens or “lawfully present” to qualify for in-state tuition.
By protecting these public institutions, DeSantis puts Floridians first and ensures fairness for lawful, tax-paying families. This not only sets an example of fiscal responsibility for elected officials in other states. It also serves as a lesson in fidelity to the voters who put them in office.
Owen E. Richason IV is the author of S4: Students, Schools, Social Media, & Success and The College Merit Scholarship Appeal Guide. Owen is also a writer for the St. Pete-Clearwater Sun and has contributed to the Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Gate, AOL, BAM magazine, Boss magazine, and Tampa Bay Business Insider.