The board of governors of the state's university system last week approved a $1,000-a-year increase for all but the poorest UF students. The idea must still get the OK of the state Legislature if it's to go into effect next fall.

The hike would apply only to the flagship, 50,000-student UF. If it's deemed a success, Florida's other 10 public universities might follow suit.

There's no question the money is needed. Florida's universities are perennial top-10 schools in the national football rankings, but when it comes to academics, this state is unimpressive.

We boast only one university in the top 50, according to the U.S. News & World Report. That's the University of Florida, Proud No. 47.

That same magazine does rank UF as the 13th-best public university in the country. It's getting increasingly competitive to get in.

But without an influx of dough, the Gators will never crack the echelon inhabited by great public universities like the University of Michigan, Cal-Berkeley or the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. [Awkward sentence. Dough influx cracking an echelon sounds like a description of Salvador Dali's worst canvas.]

No question, UF's a bargain. Tuition and fees are about as cheap as it gets: $3,206 this year. UF's tuition is the lowest of 75 public universities surveyed by USA Today. It's the lowest of any of the 60 U.S. institutions in the Association of American Universities.

The University of Michigan, to take one example, costs three times as much.

We're getting what we pay for. The student-faculty ratio at UF is 21-1, compared with 15-1 at Michigan and 14-1 at North Carolina.

UF is an especially good bargain for in-state students. Almost 95 percent of them get Bright Futures scholarships, funded by the state lottery. The program covers either 75 percent or 100 percent of tuition and most fees.

So what's the problem, you wonder? If UF needs another $35 million a year to hire more professors and reduce class sizes and thus improve its national ranking, why not just go ahead and do it?

The problem is -- guess what? -- the Legislature. The politicians control tuition. And the pols don't want tuition to go much higher because that would weaken Bright Futures. There isn't enough lottery money to cover the needed increases, and the pols don't want to appear to be reneging on the program's promise to parents.

The university, faced with this impasse, has come up with the very clever idea of adding $500-a-semester fees for an "Academic Enhancement Program."

Tuition, in other words; raising tuition in all but the name.

Geez, is it too much to expect intellectual honesty out of a university?

The losers in this case are the thousands of people who participate in the Florida Prepaid College Plan. They'll find their forethought and financial discipline devalued, because the plan won't apply to the "Academic Enhancement Program."

The plan's pitch is, "Lock in the cost of college today."

But that claim is obviously less true the more the university shifts its pricing to special fees and "enhancement programs."

Florida deserves a top-flight public university, and the University of Florida won't get there without more money.

If it takes a two-tier pricing system -- with UF charging more than the other state schools -- so be it.

Prestige universities do not lack for top students when they raise their prices. Just the opposite, in fact.

The Legislature ought to do the forthright thing, and simply raise the flagship school's tuition.