When did it all go wrong?

[Ocklawaha]

Certainly we haven't generally seen the size tornadoes that occur in Oklahoma, Kansas or even Georgia. My point being that many people on the streets of Jacksonville have bought into the rumor that we don't get killer storms, and that Duval is immune to hurricanes and earthquakes. That notion is completely false and could get people killed. I met several people in the westside of town that were talking about 'Florida's tornadoes,' a lady told us, "I'm not worried, I just open the windows so it won't blow my house down." I told her that she didn't have to worry about that and that a tornado would take care of opening any windows it wants, all by itself.

This one in 1966 was an EF-4:

4/4/1966   EF-4, killed-11, injured-530   A tornado began near Clearwater, moved across North Tampa Bay, through Carrollwood, and Temple Terrace,and then headed east-northeast to Gibsonia, Loughman, Campbell City, and Merritt Island. There is strong evidence that this tornado was on the ground from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean. The greatest damage was reported from Carrollwood to Gibsonia, where numerous houses and businesses were either damaged or destroyed.

[Adam W]

I don't know about that - I lived in Jax for 28 years and never heard anyone claim it was immune to tornadoes or earthquakes. Or tsunami, though no one mentioned those yet.

We've all seen tornadoes in Jax, maybe not massive ones, but scary ones nonetheless. As far as earthquakes go, no one anywhere is totally safe from them. But I think it's fair to say that the amount of seismic activity if Florida is relatively low compared to other parts of the Country.

People do seem to think we won't get hurricanes. And that's probably the result of the fact that we don't generally tend to get hit by hurricanes. It doesn't mean it won't happen at some point, but I think a lot of people have panicked and prepared in the past, only to have the storm miss entirely. I remember 2004, when we were sent home from work a number of times for different storms that never hit Jax (Frances being the closest call).

Anyone who thinks anywhere is immune to natural disasters is an idiot. But, aside from the widely held belief that Jax won't get hit by a hurricane, I don't think Jax residents are any different than people anywhere else.

Hurricanes and tornadoes are very real risks for Floridians. Other natural disasters are as well, but the likelihood of encountering those is lower. People can't spend their time worrying about everything that could possibly happen. They'd go mental.

We have to trust our elected officials and governments to ensure that we can effectively deal with natural disasters, should they occur.

[If_I_Loved_you]

WHO ARE THEY? Well they haven't changed much...

Herb Peyton has been a Trustee of the Alfred I. duPont Testamentary Trust since January 18, 1995. He also serves on the Nemours Foundation Board of Directors. Peyton was elected as a director of Florida East Coast Industries and St. Joe Company in December, 2000 and provided the benefit of his experience through 2004, when he retired from both boards

OCKLAWAHA

Revenge certainly is a dish best served cold innit?

“'Tis more noble to forgive, and more manly to despise, than to revenge an Injury.”
Benjamin Franklin

[cityimrov]

Comparing Jacksonville and Atlanta is harder than Jacksonville and Orlando.  One major difference I can see is that whoever was in Atlanta at the time supported building a higher education institution much sooner than Jacksonville. 

Atlanta
Georgia Institute of Technology
Established 1885  Endowment of $1.438 billion
Emory University   
Established 1836  Endowment of $5.4 billion

Jacksonville
Edward Waters College
Established 1866  Endowment $1.8 million
Jacksonville University
Established 1934 Endowment $23.3 million
University of North Florida 
Established 1969  Endowment $66.4 million

Emory was founded somewhere else but Atlanta's Asa Candler did everything he could to bring it to Atlanta.  Jacksonville's first major place of higher education didn't start until 1934 and even then, it was only a two year college until 1958.  Surprisingly, Jacksonville's oldest university was created by the black community.  Unfortunately, it looks like it wasn't enthusiastically supported by the whole community.  This probably lead it to it's stagnation.

So one major reason that Atlanta became stronger than Jacksonville is that Jacksonville has a long history of not supporting higher education.  The influential people in Jacksonville at the time didn't seem to fight for a university like Asa Candler did for Emory and Atlanta.

Another point of interest is that the State of Florida wasn't enthusiastic about higher education either trying their very best to ignore it until the 1900s.  That was much longer than many other states.  With this, it looks like Florida has a very long history of underfunding it's higher education system. 

Florida's 1868 constitution required the establishment of a state-sponsored university. The state's first attempts to establish a multi-college university were in Tallahassee, where the West Florida Seminary was located. In 1883, a charter passed which merged the West Florida Seminary and the Tallahassee College of Medicine and Surgery into the Florida University, the first such institution in the state.[9] The West Florida Seminary became the university's Literary College, containing several "schools" or departments; however its "separate Charter and special organization" were maintained.[10] The university charter also recognized three further colleges to be established at a later time: a Law College, a Theological Institute, and a Polytechnic and Normal Institute.[10]

The Florida Legislature recognized the institution in 1885 under the name "University of Florida", but it refused to supply any additional funding.[11] Without state financial support the university venture struggled, and the medical college relocated to Jacksonville later that year.[9] The Tallahassee institution never actually adopted the "university" title.[11] Florida Agricultural College attempted to revive the idea, announcing its desire to merge with the University of Florida in 1886 and 1887, however, nothing came of this at the time.[11] Then, in 1903, the legislature repealed the act designating the Tallahassee institution as the "University of Florida," and transferring the title to Florida Agricultural College.[11] This institution operated as the University of Florida until 1905, when Florida's higher education system was entirely reorganized by the Buckman Act.[12]

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Florida_Seminary

All this information came from Wikipedia so I'll you guys vet it.   

[Tacachale]

The higher education problem is a statewide issue. Our state university "system" was totally backward until its reorganization in 1905, and after that point there was wide resistance to expansion even as the state continued to grow. The private front was not any better. Schools found it difficult to find financing and maintaining enrollment, and even the larger cities rarely had more than one or two colleges.

The private colleges strongly resisted expanding public junior colleges, and later, creating new state universities. Jacksonville was no stranger to this when we were trying to establish what are now FSCJ and UNF.

Today Florida has some great institutions, but we have limited options and little diversity in specialties and campus environments. However, though I'm biased, I argue that Jax has one of the state's most dynamic and interesting universities in UNF.

[cityimrov]

The private colleges strongly resisted expanding public junior colleges, and later, creating new state universities. Jacksonville was no stranger to this when we were trying to establish what are now FSCJ and UNF.

These private colleges were pretty small.  Even if they resisted, their small size meant their opinion shouldn't matter that much.  Is there more to this story? 

Today Florida has some great institutions, but we have limited options and little diversity in specialties and campus environments. However, though I'm biased, I argue that Jax has one of the state's most dynamic and interesting universities in UNF.

I can't call any universities in Florida great.  Some are good but none seem to be great.

[Adam W]

The private colleges strongly resisted expanding public junior colleges, and later, creating new state universities. Jacksonville was no stranger to this when we were trying to establish what are now FSCJ and UNF.

These private colleges were pretty small.  Even if they resisted, their small size meant their opinion shouldn't matter that much.  Is there more to this story? 

Today Florida has some great institutions, but we have limited options and little diversity in specialties and campus environments. However, though I'm biased, I argue that Jax has one of the state's most dynamic and interesting universities in UNF.

I can't call any universities in Florida great.  Some are good but none seem to be great.

I think both the University of Florida and the University of Miami could be considered close to "great" especially when it comes to some of their constituent colleges.

UNF is easily the best school in Jacksonville. But it's not really fair to compare Jacksonville and Atlanta when it comes to universities. The cities are just so different, in different leagues.

Atlanta has at least one great university (Emory) and probably two if you count Georgia Tech. And then there's Georgia State, which is what it is - not a great school, but a state school that probably ranks higher than UNF. I have no idea how good Mercer and Oglethorpe are. But when you consider the sheer number of universities and colleges in Atlanta, it's clear that, no matter how 'great' they are, Atlanta is certainly much more of a 'college town' than Jacksonville.

But Atlanta is a lot larger and wealthier.

[Ocklawaha]

I can't call any universities in Florida great.  Some are good but none seem to be great.

I heard a rumor that things are so bad in Gainesville, Tallahassee and Miami, that if you drive past one of the universities they'll throw a diploma in your car.

It's NOT TRUE, you gotta stop first.

[simms3]

Atlanta
Georgia Institute of Technology
Established 1885  Endowment of $1.438 billion
Emory University   
Established 1836  Endowment of $5.4 billion   

Haha I vetted it.  I helped manage Tech's Wiki page back in the day.  Tech Foundation endowments as of June 30, 2011 are at $1.627B, which is still well below the peak before the crash, but I happen to know that this year will see a large increase and by next year it may be over $2B.  Emory's figures are up to date (6-30-11) and that endowment saw a 15% increase this past year.  GA Tech also has the largest student run endowment in the US (separate from the Foundation).  It's just under $1M, so not very large hehe.

In the same time frame UF's endowment is at about $1.295B and FSU's is $0.525B, each containing tens of thousands more students than either Emory or Tech.  University of Miami, a private school with similar tuition as Emory regardless of state, has an endowment of $720M and about 2,000 more students.

In terms of rankings, both Tech and Emory are truly world class (and so are UF and FSU, but not quite to that level).  Tech has the 4th ranked graduate engineering program behind MIT, Stanford and Berkeley (ahead of Caltech), and usually trades places with those schools.  It has the 5th best undergrad program (the "lowest" ranked its been in a while).  It consistently has the #2 Biomedical Engineering program behind Johns Hopkins.

Emory has the #19 b-school in the country, and Tech comes in at 32, though as recently as 2009 Tech's was 22 while Emory's was 23.  Tech's school is also new and was just recently named the Scheller School of B 2 weeks ago thanks to a hefty contribution.  UF's b-school comes in at 42 and UGA's at 57.  University of Miami comes in at 70 and FSU's ranking wasn't published this year (though I have seen it up there before).  No school in the south makes it into top 11 in terms of Finance programs, which I think is the real meat of a b-school, though Georgia Tech is among the top 20 feeder schools for Wharton's program (1 of 3 schools in the south, the other 2 being UVA and Duke).  Tech also has the #14 Quant program in the country (all foreigners as you can imagine).

Overall law Emory is #24.  UGA is #34.  UF is #48.  FSU is #51 (maybe we'll see FSU take over one of UF's more prestigious rankings!), GA State is #58, University of Miami #69.

Emory's med school (research) is ranked 21st.  UF is #48.  University of Miami #53.  GA Health Sciences Univ in Augusta #69.  USF #75.  FSU rank not published.

Public Affairs UGA #4.  FSU #16!  GA State #23.  GA Tech #53.  UCF #59.

Computer Science GA Tech #10 (ahead of Caltech this year again I might add ).  UF #39.  FSU #79.  UCF #91.  GA State #99.  USF #99.

Math GA Tech #30.  UF #59.  Emory #63.  FSU #76.

Physics GA Tech #30.  UF #36.  FSU #48.

Biological Sciences Emory #34.  UF #46.  UGA #46.  GA Tech #56.  University of Miami #82.  FSU #92.

Overall University rankings: Emory #20.  GA Tech #36.  University of Miami #38 (not sure how it ranks this high when it bombs its rankings otherwise).  UF #58.  UGA #62.  FSU #101.  FL Tech #164.  UCF #177.  USF #181.

And as a major job center, in addition to the 13,000 Emory students, the 20,000 Tech students, the 31,000 GA State students, the 33,000 UGA students, and the 6,000 Atlanta University Center students (3 black ivies Morehouse, Spelman and Clark), Atlanta pulls thousands of UF/FSU grads each year away from the state of FL (I'm friends with a good many ).

On a per student basis, Spelman with an endowment of nearly $300M and only 2,355 students has a more powerful endowment than any FL school and even schools like GA Tech ($125K/student versus $80K/student at Tech and $26K/student at UF).


Anyway, long story short is that aside from Atlanta, just look at other successful cities with powerful 21st century economies and they all have major research universities at the helm and a hyper-educated population.  Having as many UF/FSU friends up here in GA as I do, I see firsthand the bleeding of talent FL is suffering from.  Not only that, the state is under-educated when compared relatively to the population.  No matter how large the schools are, there still aren't enough...especially considering grads leave for other states.


I'm interested in endowments coming from a finance background and seeing a little bit of the behind the scenes myself.  Most endowments invest anywhere from 3-10% in real estate, somehow or another, often near the school itself where some degree of control can be exercised.

BTW Florida Coastal has some pretty serious private equity backing it.  I was in the room when some people were having a conversation about the John Marshall School and FL Coastal came up...very interesting!  Totally lost opportunity for downtown Jax.

Speaking of which, GA State has invested billions of dollars in downtown Atlanta, transforming from a commuter school to a traditional university.  It has built dorms, new campus buildings, a Greek Row, rehabilitated sidewalks, and increased the vibrancy of downtown, where thousands of students now live in converted buildings.  According to Wiki its economic impact on Atl is $1.4B annually, and I don't doubt it.

[Tacachale]

The private colleges strongly resisted expanding public junior colleges, and later, creating new state universities. Jacksonville was no stranger to this when we were trying to establish what are now FSCJ and UNF.

These private colleges were pretty small.  Even if they resisted, their small size meant their opinion shouldn't matter that much.  Is there more to this story? 

Though the private schools were mostly small (except for Miami), they were very well connected, and for the most part were the only game in their respective towns. They argued that they were already meeting the cities' higher education demand and that another, publicly financed university would degrade their quality. And yes, there was more to the story than that. There was also the matter that Florida had very weak grade school education; some argued we should improve that first before worrying about colleges. And in Jacksonville especially, there was a conflict over where to put the school; local leaders wanted it downtown, but the state preferred a rural location (which is what they got). Still, resistance from the other schools was significant.

Today Florida has some great institutions, but we have limited options and little diversity in specialties and campus environments. However, though I'm biased, I argue that Jax has one of the state's most dynamic and interesting universities in UNF.

I can't call any universities in Florida great.  Some are good but none seem to be great.

"Great" means different things to different people. The University of Florida is well regarded nationally. FSU, and increasingly USF and UCF, also do a lot of research and have some terrific programs. We also have a few very strong small liberal arts colleges, like Flagler and Eckerd. And in terms of positive growth I'd rank UNF very highly. However, the best university systems like North Carolina and California aren't great simply because they have a few flagship schools that do a ton of research (though they do); they're great because they offer a wide array of schools with different specialties, focuses and environments. We simply don't have that.

[Tacachale]

Simms, you appear to put a lot of stock in those US News rankings. Those are fine as a general gauge, but they rely on subjective analysis and sometimes use incorrect and/or out-of-date data. In terms of the Florida State University System, their numbers are often so off that I have no idea where they're even getting their data from. Certainly not the state.

As far as endowments go, it's apples to oranges. Private schools almost always have higher endowments (and tuitions) than comparable public schools, for the obvious reason that they're not getting state support. In Florida, state universities receive a much higher contribution than nearly every other state, though the current government is making short work of that. In other words, the schools have a far deeper well than their endowment alone.

Anyway, long story short is that aside from Atlanta, just look at other successful cities with powerful 21st century economies and they all have major research universities at the helm and a hyper-educated population.  Having as many UF/FSU friends up here in GA as I do, I see firsthand the bleeding of talent FL is suffering from.  Not only that, the state is under-educated when compared relatively to the population.  No matter how large the schools are, there still aren't enough...especially considering grads leave for other states.

You're perception is incorrect. Georgia is actually bleeding Grads; Florida is gaining them. In terms of Atlanta specifically, that often happens in a place with a nationally known schools; students move there from elsewhere for college, and then move on. In Florida, we are undereducated and continue to produce too few graduates per capita. We have more who are coming in from out of state.

[simms3]

USNWW is the gold standard, whether you agree or not and whether it's correct or not.

Also, the cities that attract the most college educated are typically big cities that have major universities and thriving diverse economies.  You can argue all you want that GA is bleeding grads (your link does not work), but I'll use my boots on the ground approach and contend that I have rarely heard of anyone leaving Atlanta for FL for work (can't speak to GA Southern or Valdosta State grads...they're closer to FL and may head down, I just don't know).  Many of my classmates, fraternity brothers and general friends from colleges closer to Atlanta have found jobs in Boston, Chicago, Richmond, Houston, Los Angeles, Charleston, Charlotte, DC and New York, and most of have stayed in Atlanta.  I know one girl who went to med school down at University of Miami afterward and she's the only one I know who went south.

Conversely, my firm has a Gator as an employee (out of the excellent building construction program down there), and her husband is also a Gator working in Atlanta.  I have several FSU friends who have moved up, including one in the past month out of the nursing program (now in the Mercer graduate nursing program).  My business network here is filled with UF grads.  Filled.  There are nearly as many UF car tags as UGA car tags in Atlanta.  It's like UGA stickers in Jacksonville (the difference being that the Gators up here actually went to UF).

Can you honestly say the same that you know a TON of Tech, Emory and UGA grads working in Jax?

Getting back to Jacksonville, my last points were regarding FL Coastal, which has been rehashed time and time again on this forum.  It was definitely a major lost opportunity for the city when they were not courted to come downtown.  Some sort of school presence downtown is needed to bring the creative class, or a class of fresh young lawyers or med students.  It could and would do wonders, but every opportunity seems to have been mishandled by the city.

[simms3]

As far as endowments go, it's apples to oranges. Private schools almost always have higher endowments (and tuitions) than comparable public schools, for the obvious reason that they're not getting state support. In Florida, state universities receive a much higher contribution than nearly every other state, though the current government is making short work of that. In other words, the schools have a far deeper well than their endowment alone.

As a reminder Tech is a public school (though I think it's ~30% int'l and another 30% out of state, ~15-20% state funding).  Look at the endowments for UT, Indiana, Mich State, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Texas A&M (apparently $7B), Michigan (nearly $8B), UVA, Washington, and Wisconsin-Madison.  Both UF and FSU are 2 of the largest public universities in the country with high rankings, major programs, intense research and hefty scholarship programs.  You would think their endowments would be a tad bit larger.

[Tacachale]

USNWW is the gold standard, whether you agree or not and whether it's correct or not.

It's a nice gauge, and good for recruitment pamphlets, but its metrics are highly problematic. On top of the fact that they demonstrably use out-of-date or incorrect data, it's become pretty widespread at colleges to look at the metrics and tweak their practices to get a better ranking. Some schools just  cheat and blatantly lie about themselves.

Also, the cities that attract the most college educated are typically big cities that have major universities and thriving diverse economies.  You can argue all you want that GA is bleeding grads (your link does not work), but I'll use my boots on the ground approach and contend that I have rarely heard of anyone leaving Atlanta for FL for work (can't speak to GA Southern or Valdosta State grads...they're closer to FL and may head down, I just don't know).  Many of my classmates, fraternity brothers and general friends from colleges closer to Atlanta have found jobs in Boston, Chicago, Richmond, Houston, Los Angeles, Charleston, Charlotte, DC and New York, and most of have stayed in Atlanta.  I know one girl who went to med school down at University of Miami afterward and she's the only one I know who went south.

Conversely, my firm has a Gator as an employee (out of the excellent building construction program down there), and her husband is also a Gator working in Atlanta.  I have several FSU friends who have moved up, including one in the past month out of the nursing program (now in the Mercer graduate nursing program).  My business network here is filled with UF grads.  Filled.  There are nearly as many UF car tags as UGA car tags in Atlanta.  It's like UGA stickers in Jacksonville (the difference being that the Gators up here actually went to UF).

Can you honestly say the same that you know a TON of Tech, Emory and UGA grads working in Jax?

Actually I know quite a few (I work at a college). However, I don't rely on anecdotal evidence or my filtered personal experience. I fixed the link, which is from the National Center for Education Statistics; I think we're talking past each other here. Georgia is losing high school grads to other states. In terms of Atlanta, this kind of thing often happens when you have a college that's a national draw - you draw more of your students from elsewhere (similarly, Athens and Gainesville presumably lose even more of their grads). It may be true that Atlanta is attracting recent college grads from elsewhere (I assume it is), but at the same time Georgia is exporting its own best and brightest. This is a well known problem for them, and one of the primary reasons for the reorganizations in the university system in the 1990s.

Florida's problem isn't that we're losing anyone, it's that proportionately we're not sending enough of them to college and that the state is undereducated in general.

Getting back to Jacksonville, my last points were regarding FL Coastal, which has been rehashed time and time again on this forum.  It was definitely a major lost opportunity for the city when they were not courted to come downtown.  Some sort of school presence downtown is needed to bring the creative class, or a class of fresh young lawyers or med students.  It could and would do wonders, but every opportunity seems to have been mishandled by the city.

You're definitely right that that was a real loss for downtown.

[Tacachale]

As far as endowments go, it's apples to oranges. Private schools almost always have higher endowments (and tuitions) than comparable public schools, for the obvious reason that they're not getting state support. In Florida, state universities receive a much higher contribution than nearly every other state, though the current government is making short work of that. In other words, the schools have a far deeper well than their endowment alone.

As a reminder Tech is a public school (though I think it's ~30% int'l and another 30% out of state, ~15-20% state funding).  Look at the endowments for UT, Indiana, Mich State, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue, Texas A&M (apparently $7B), Michigan (nearly $8B), UVA, Washington, and Wisconsin-Madison.  Both UF and FSU are 2 of the largest public universities in the country with high rankings, major programs, intense research and hefty scholarship programs.  You would think their endowments would be a tad bit larger.

Yes, but UF and FSU are getting much more support from the state than most if not all of those other schools. Just look at the difference in tuition. Not to mention the fact that even if you have a huge endowment and just sit on it without spending anything doesn't do a damn bit of good besides generating even more money you don't spend (not saying that happens at Georgia Tech).