The Florida Board of Governors has approved Florida Atlantic University’s new, five-year strategic plan that focuses on the pursuit of student success and research excellence.
The plan, branded “Where Tomorrow Begins,” highlights four imperatives through which it aims to improve, including:
- Evolving the university from a knowledge transfer institution to one that equips students with more real-world experience
- Advancing research areas such as neuroscience and quantum computing
- Expanding campus resources
- Elevating the institution’s prestige nationally
“We are making sure that students are future-proof in terms of their educations, so that they can get the jobs that maybe don’t exist yet and make sure they have the creative thinking skills to be successful in their careers,” said James Capp, senior associate vice president for strategic planning & student success.
The new strategic plan comes as FAU proposed its largest operating budget in history, topping $1 billion. It is still pending approval from the Florida Board of Governors.
The Plan’s “Gamechanger”
One point raised in the Board of Governors meeting last month was that FAU falls below the state standard for average funding per student. The system average is $22,217, with the Boca Raton university investing $15,723, according to a November 2025 SUS efficiency study.
Capp says that investing in students to make sure they can afford their educational experience is the backbone of the new plan.
FAU aims to achieve its goals through financially assisting students who take unpaid internships, such as with nonprofits or local/state government-related roles, a move that Capp says is a “gamechanger” for students.
“We’ve made institutional investments to ensure we can actually pay them so they can make a wage while they are doing the internship,” says Capp.
An Upgrade to FAU’s State Ranking Score
FAU scored another win last month by improving its state ranking score and leaving the Florida Board of Governor’s watchlist.
Every year, the State University System (SUS) ranks Florida’s 12 Public Schools through 10 metrics that measure success in student retention, graduation rates, and more. The amount of funding each school receives is dependent on their score.
If the score decreases in one year, the college is put on a watchlist. If a university’s score decreases for two consecutive years, the Board of Governors withholds their investment until a strategic plan by the university is submitted at the September meeting.
Last year, FAU was the only college to be on the watchlist after dropping eight points, from 84 to 76. They rose four points this year and improved on the following metrics: four-year graduation rate; second year retention with GPA above 2.0; percent of undergraduates with Pell Grant; and and three-year graduation rate for associate arts transfer students in the Florida College System.
This month, FAU is slated to receive a little over $43 million from the state in performance-based funding.
How does FAU Compare to Other State Universities?
Despite increasing its score, FAU still only ranks above two universities, Florida Golf Coast University and New College of Florida, with the latter joining the watchlist this year along with Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
Capp says that landing on the watchlist last year had no impact on the university’s new strategic plan, and that student success has always been ingrained in its culture.
“Every year you have a number of schools that are on or off the watchlist,” says Capp. “That has nothing to do with the actual outcome for students as much as it has to do with how the Board of Governors just awards points in their system.”
FAU has been on the watchlist twice since the performance-based funding model was adopted in 2015. Once in 2022, and then in 2025, the first time they scored below 80.
Meanwhile, one of the top three universities in the ranking, Florida International University (FIU), scored 97 points this year and is set to receive more than $70 million in state funding. FAU has been trying to distinguish itself from the Miami-based university due to the similarity in their acronyms, even rebranding itself in early 2024 to “Florida Atlantic.” They have not been able to outscore FIU in the SUS since the program’s implementation in Florida.
