[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 151 (Wednesday, October 21, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2298-E2299]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   TRIBUTE TO STANLEY G. TATE--MAKING HIGHER EDUCATION POSSIBLE FOR 
              HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF FLORIDA'S CHILDREN

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. CARRIE P. MEEK

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, October 21, 1998

  Mrs. MEEK of Florida. Mr. Speaker, in 1987, with my strong support, 
the Florida Legislature created the Florida Prepaid Postsecondary 
Education Expense Program to allow families to prepay college tuition 
and housing expenses for their children at a lower rate than the 
projected costs at the time of enrollment.
  Florida was only the second state to try such an innovative program. 
Today it is a runaway success, thanks largely to the Chairman of the 
Board of the Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Program, 
Stanley G. Tate, whose brilliant leadership and personal commitment 
have made Florida's prepaid college tuition program the most successful 
in the nation.
  Stanley Tate deserves the congratulations and thanks of every 
Floridian, and I join with our community in saluting him. The Miami 
Herald recently profiled Mr. Tate in a page-one article, which I would 
like to share with my colleagues.

                 [From the Miami Herald, Oct. 18, 1998]

          College Crusader--Developer paves road to education

                            (By Jack Wheat)

       Florida's prepaid college tuition program kicks off its 
     second decade on Monday as the most successful plan of its 
     kind in America, allowing Floridians to pay for a child's 
     future college tuition at today's cheaper rates.
       The Florida Prepaid College Program is considered such a 
     good deal that more than 375,000 children, from birth to high 
     school age, were signed up in the first 10 years.
       In hindsight, that kind of popularity seems a foregone 
     conclusion. After all, it's possible to buy a contract that 
     will allow a fourth-grader to attend a state university in 
     2007 for slightly less than what this year's undergraduates 
     pay.
       But the program's success is a civic Cinderella story, in 
     which a real-life godfather came in the rescue:
       Meet Stanley G. Tate, a millionaire Miami developer whose 
     iron will and deep pockets made a winner out of a little-
     known program that looked like it was going nowhere when 
     contracts first went on sale in 1988.
       ``There were a lot of people who were saying it would never 
     fly,'' said Tallahassee lawyer Philip Blank, general counsel 
     for the program. ``But when Stanley was appointed to the 
     board, he took it to mean he needed to do what he would do 
     with his own private business.''
       Florida was the second state to try a prepaid tuition 
     program. The first, Michigan, was struggling through a 
     troubled start-up. Although the Florida legislature approved 
     the program over-whelmingly in 1987, its staff was instructed 
     to watch its progress closely for signs of trouble.
       Tate knew it was sound because he helped design the plan 
     from ground up.
       In 1986, Gov. Bob Graham asked him to work with the 
     legislative staff to develop a program like one just started 
     in Michigan. Tate and the staff learned from Michigan's 
     glitches and put together a program of guaranteed prepayment 
     of future university and community college tuition.


       The next year, Gov. Bob Martinez appointed Tate to the 
     prepaid college plan board, and he became its first--and so 
     far, only--chairman.


                           Statewide campaign

       In 1988, with initial sales significantly lower than he had 
     predicted, Tate feared that the program would die the 
     unceremonious death of new products that are labeled duds.
       So he put his business and personal life on hold and 
     started barnstorming. ``I went all over the state, from 
     Pensacola on down,'' Tate said.

[[Page E2299]]

       During a three-month crusade, he visited local school 
     boards and state education officials, promising he would get 
     program pamphlets to every school that would distribute them 
     to kids to take home to their parents.
       ``I printed up two million pamphlets,'' he said.
       The fledging program paid for as many as it could. The 
     plan, starting up with $600,000 borrowed from a state 
     insurance fund, couldn't pay for them all.
       Barnett Bank donated ad agency services, and Tate wrote 
     checks to TV and radio stations around the state to broadcast 
     spots. He paid all his travel costs, too.
       He estimates his campaign cost him $200,000 out of pocket. 
     At first, he called it a loan, but he never sought repayment.
       ``I can't get him to take state reimbursement to save my 
     life,'' Blank said.


                           Thousands sign up

       When the first enrollment period ended in January 1989, the 
     Florida Prepaid College Program had sold 58,651 contracts--
     below Tate's initial expectation of 100,000 but far more than 
     skeptics ever imagined.
       Tate, 70, said he had highly personal reasons for his 
     crusade as well as general principle.
       Attending the University of Florida in the 1940s was one of 
     the toughest ordeals of his life, he said in an interview 
     last week.
       The son of a tung-oil dealer from Miami Beach, he was the 
     first in his family to go to college. He worked at 
     Gainesville's Primrose Inn restaurant for tips and meals. For 
     two years, he couldn't go home for Christmas break; otherwise 
     he would have lost his job.
       That experience illustrated how deeply he values a college 
     education.
       ``I have always said that if this state is going to 
     prosper, we've got to have more of our young people going to 
     college and staying in Florida,'' Tate said.
       As a developer who built a real-estate empire in Florida 
     and South Carolina, he knows that a large pool of highly 
     educated workers is a magnet for industries and corporate 
     operations. They buy prime property and construct upscale 
     facilities and pay well. Their employees buy nice houses, 
     cars and boats, and they get involved in civic and cultural 
     life, making communities stronger, he said.


                           A political figure

       He was a case in point. He graduated from UF, came back to 
     Dade, built a home in Bay Harbor Islands, served 20 years in 
     Bay Harbor Islands government as a councilman, vice mayor and 
     mayor. He also became a fixture in Republican politics, but 
     worked comfortably with Democrats, too.
       In 1993, President Clinton nominated Tate as chief 
     executive officer of the Resolution Trust Corp., which was 
     charged with cleaning up the national savings-and-loan mess. 
     He spent five months in Washington preparing to move into the 
     job, but returned to Miami when the Senate would not set 
     confirmation hearings.
       Tate's critics accused him of trying to get involved in 
     details of agency decision-making on behalf of friends and 
     politicians. Tate, however, believes he was a victim of 
     sniping from insiders who objected to the strong hands-on 
     management methods he believed were necessary to identify and 
     correct problems in the troubled regulatory agency.
       In any event, in Tate's mind, all of his other civic 
     achievements pale in significance to the prepaid program.
       ``When you think of all the many thousands of college 
     educations we've helped make possible, that's a real 
     legacy,'' he said.
       The program succeeds because it lets families work together 
     to the benefit of everybody's children, said Tate, who has 
     enrolled all of his Florida grandchildren.


                            A matter of math

       He knew the plan could work after he saw two sets of 
     figures, he said:
       From 1967 to 1987, state university tuition rose an average 
     of 7 percent a year. During the same period, stocks and bonds 
     earned an average of 7.5 percent a year. The statistics 
     showed that if parents, grandparents and other benefactors 
     paid into the plan at current tuition rates, a well-run 
     investment would make their money grow enough to cover future 
     tuition increases.
       Tate predicts the recent erratic stock and bond markets 
     will stimulate a surge of interest in prepaid tuition this 
     year.
       In the past, experts like Mike Powers, whose book Investing 
     for Your Child's College Education has just appeared, have 
     recommended prepaid plans for poor money managers. But Powers 
     wrote, ``When examined from a purely economic perspective, 
     they're a lousy investment.''
       But Powers wrote his book during a five-year market boom. 
     By the time it hit bookstores, markets were plunging.
       When investors get stockbrokers' reports ``and see their 
     value has gone down 15 or 20 percent,'' Tate said, they'll 
     see new merit in the idea of paying this year's tuition rates 
     to cover college costs that will be incurred up to 22 years 
     from new--when this fall's newborns are college seniors.
       But he worries that a souring economy could lead prepaid 
     tuition contract-holders who need the program most to drop 
     out. If recession hits, he fears, thousands of cash-strapped 
     Florida families who are prepaying tuition in monthly 
     installments will let the contracts lapse.
       Contract-holders who let their payments lapse get a refund 
     of what they paid in, with no interest. But the contracts 
     cannot be reinstated.
       ``It's probably the second-most important debt payment you 
     can make, right behind your mortgage payment,'' Tate said.

     

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