Florida Prepaid College Plan wins kudos

College savings plan guru Joe Hurley likes the Florida Prepaid College Plan, but isn't so enamored with its younger sibling, the Florida College Investment Plan. Hurley gives the prepaid plan four out of five caps on his Web site, SavingforCollege.com, meaning he thinks it is "an excellent program with many benefits for the participant and positive investment attributes. If it has any significant weaknesses then it also has some particularly good things to recommend it." The caps are little mortar boards. The investment plan only gets three caps, meaning "a very good program that offers valuable benefits but may have some limitations or concerns that investors need to be aware of." But then Hurley is pretty picky. Florida residents can buy an investment-style plan from another state, but there aren't any that rate Hurley's five caps for out-of-state residents.The closest are Illinois' Bright Start College Savings plan (the direct-sold version, not the broker-sold), the Michigan Education Savings Plan, the College Savings Plan of Nebraska , the South Carolina Future College 529 Savings Plan and the Virginia Education Savings Trust, all of which get 4.5 caps for nonresidents. Here's his full list of ratings and here's the Web site for the Florida plans.