Undocumented students could be banned from state university enrollment under looming rule change

Undocumented students will be barred from enrolling in Florida’s state universities if a new admissions change continues to gain traction and is approved ahead of the 2027-2028 school year.

The Florida Board of Governors, the state’s top higher education commission, unanimously moved forward with the rule change on Thursday. They’ll vote on it in September.

“[The proposal] prioritizes the enrollment of Florida residents. It requires the universities to verify lawful presence before initial enrollment of students beginning in the ’27-’28 academic year,” said Emily Sikes, the BOG’s vice chancellor for academic and student affairs.

“This is for new students enrolling in the ’27-’28 academic year only. … It would not interrupt any currently enrolled students,” she added.

This would apply only to state universities, not private ones like the University of Miami.

On Thursday, board members tweaked the proposal’s language after they noticed that, as written, it could accidentally ban from universities foreign students attending online.

“I don’t think it would be the intent of this board to preclude somebody who lives overseas from being able to access online programs,” board chair Alan Levine said. So they edited the language to ban anyone “unlawfully present” in the United States instead of anyone “not lawfully present.”

The move, which would not take effect for another year and a half and only if approved by the full BOG, would slate Florida alongside Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina in either fully or partially obstructing undocumented students from enrollment. Thursday’s was only the first step in the proposal’s road to becoming an official rule.

This comes as the state Board of Education is expected to adopt a nearly identical rule for Florida colleges next week.

“I am fully supportive of it,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a press conference Wednesday. “I think what they are doing is the right thing to do, and I think it’s putting the students in Florida that are growing up here, going to our schools, Florida residents. … It’s putting them first.”

The rule change reflects a larger intersection between DeSantis’ most powerful beats: education and immigration. He’s overhauled both in a manner previously unseen in Florida — inflaming the national war on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; installing conservative allies as university presidents; overseeing the nation’s first state-run migrant detention center; and banning in-state tuition for undocumented college students.

In 2014, Gov. Rick Scott signed a law allowing undocumented college students who attended Florida high schools to pay in-state tuition. The bill was championed by then-state Sen. Jeanette Nuñez, later lieutenant governor under DeSantis. Nuñez is now president of Florida International University.