This week was one of mixed emotions for the University of South Florida Community. We accomplished our primary goal of student success by conferring degrees upon nearly 6,000 new graduates, helping our students achieve their dreams and earn their USF degrees.

We have also been addressing a significant impediment to our future success in our collective response to the last-minute introduction of changes in law to metrics that directly impact one of USF’s most important and publicly stated goals—achieving our rightful designation as a “Preeminent State Research University.” The Preeminent designation is a public recognition by our state of USF as a premier Florida research university, but it also comes with a significant additional investment in USF.

Since the preeminence program was enacted into law in 2013, USF has set out on a course to meet 11 of the 12 benchmarks in law, the threshold necessary for achieving the designation. Through the hard work of our students, faculty and staff since 2013, USF has achieved most of the benchmarks already. This spring, we met yet another metric by achieving a 90-percent retention rate during the Fall 2016 Semester. Importantly, we remained on track to reach the eleventh metric—the 6-year 70-percent graduation rate—next year after posting a 67-percent 6-year graduation rate this year. We already know—thanks to the graduates who walked across our stages this weekend—that a 70-percent 6-year graduation rate has been achieved this year. This milestone would have assured USF Preeminent eligibility in 2018.

In January, the Florida Senate filed legislation to convert the preeminence program’s 70-percent 6-year graduation rate requirement to a 4-year graduation rate of 50 percent or greater. The full Senate voted twice on this legislation and by votes of 35-1 and 36-2 endorsed this new threshold. The Florida House, in turn, filed similar legislation and even considered it in a House committee and endorsed the threshold as the appropriate benchmark to measure preeminence. At no point was it ever publicly suggested a 4-year 50-percent threshold was inadequate for determining preeminence.

In late April, I requested that the Board of Governors of the State University System certify what we believed to be true—that USF’s most recent 4-year graduation rate was 54 percent and that we continued to achieve the other 10 metrics we had previously met. The BOG performed the data certification and within days of our request notified the Legislature that if the change in law was enacted as expected, USF would qualify for the Preeminent designation immediately in 2017, one year ahead of schedule. No one jumped the gun. We were working with facts and a process that was transparent to arrive at this fairly straightforward conclusion.

Unfortunately, after being informed of USF’s metric achievement level and agreeing over the course of several public meetings to budget more dollars than originally planned for preeminent-achieving institutions, a policy change was introduced that had never before been publicly considered. At the final public meeting of the legislative session, a change in the graduation rate was proposed and immediately adopted to change the preeminence graduation metric to a 4-year 60-precent threshold. That was the first time anyone at USF or even most of our local legislative delegation had heard of this new threshold.

This last-minute change caused the loss of nearly $11 million recurring dollars in 2017-18, which USF would have shared in if designated Preeminent in 2017. But our institution’s leadership was more concerned about the second prong—pushing back the expected date by which USF could earn the Preeminent designation to 2020 or later when we project to reach a 4-year graduation rate of 60 percent. This is an unacceptable outcome for the Tampa Bay Region and for USF.

I have heard the USF System “should be grateful for the $42 million in increased funding it is receiving.” Let me be clear, we are very pleased. I would also like to point out that of the $42 million in increased operational funding the USF System will receive next fiscal year, nearly $35 million is from funding made available to all state universities awarded out based on institutional performance. Our local delegation worked hard to put the funding into those pots and the USF System worked hard to earn our fair share. That is what makes this preeminence decision so disappointing and something that requires an immediate plan for resolution.

Thankfully, leaders among our Tampa Bay Area Legislative Delegation, such as Senators Bill Galvano, Tom Lee, Darryl Rouson and Dana Young and State Reps. Danny Burgess, Janet Cruz and Shawn Harrison spoke out on USF’s behalf. We have secured a commitment that the leadership of the Florida Legislature is willing to sit with USF’s leadership and determine how best to get USF back on its appropriate path to preeminence. We expect this to happen as soon as practicable so we can bring a full resolution to this matter of significant concern and to report back to you immediately on this plan for resolution. Settling for anything less would be unacceptable for our institution and our region.

Brian Lamb is chairman of the University of South Florida Board of Trustees.