UNF plans to add nearly 9,000 students over the next 5 years

[marcuscnelson]

UNF's new Strategic Plan sets an ambitious target of the school's population growing from 16,000 students to 25,000 by 2028, while becoming one of the nation's top public universities.

https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/unf-strategic-plan-calls-for-25000-total-students-2028/77-933234db-a7af-4e2f-ad18-600aef0fc0fd

[jaxlongtimer]

Interesting.  Nationwide, demand for 4 year colleges has actually been declining.  The link in the article shows the same trend for both UNF and Florida state universities in total which is a bit more surprising considering Florida's rapid population growth.

So, while I am supportive of growing UNF, I am wondering where they will find these students in this environment.  Some colleges might turn to foreign students, but good luck with that given DeSantis's actions of late.  They also could lower admissions standards but that isn't going to take them to a Top 100 university that they say they aspire to be.

If they are including graduate students in the growth, I wonder if they are motivated by a perceived "threat" from UF coming to town.

I also question that $300 million could fund a 50+% expansion of the student body.

[Charles Hunter]

Gee. And I remember when there were only 4 buildings, plus the Boathouse!

[jcjohnpaint]

I have huge waitlists in all my classes.

[jaxlongtimer]

I have huge waitlists in all my classes.

LOL.  Of course, that's different from huge waitlists for admission.  Your waitlists may be a function of how great a teacher you are, your subject matter and/or a lack of enough faculty to meet the needs of existing students.  The latter could be another obstacle to expansion.  Wondering how many professors UNF can recruit given, again, DeSantis's attacks on educators.

[jcjohnpaint]

We have has a handful of faculty walk away due to DeSantis. I'm sure many more will follow with the 'post-tenure review'. I might be one of them. Personally, I think rushing to get 9000 students will be disastrous.

[thelakelander]

Desantis will be gone before long. He's just a small blimp in Florida's timeline.

[marcuscnelson]

He'll be gone, but there's still the fallout of the educators pushed out of the system, the programs that are illegal to fund, the university presidents and trustees who have been installed. What will it take to undo what's happened to New College? Or Ben Sasse's planned changes at UF? Or if Randy Fine is put in charge of FAU? Not to mention everything in K-12. And there's no guarantee that the next governor won't be worse.

[thelakelander]

He doesn't really scare me as much as most. I at least know where he stands. I rather that, then deal with those who speak a good game, but fail to show up when really needed.  I've been around a while now, lived through multiple governors, presidents, mayors, etc. Graduating high school prior to desegregation, my parent's generation have seen much worse.

Despite those that want to stop progress, progress has continued. Take it as a badge of honor that there are those who now feel so threatened with the progress, that they expose their true selves with tactics to try to preserve an old unequitable way of life.

With politics, they come and go and swing in multiple directions as time goes on. Yeah, he may screw up New College. But where there's a ying, there's a yang. Opportunity will be opened elsewhere. Demographics show that Florida is getting more purple every day, so what he's doing right now (that the beating he's taking nationally) is more likely to swing things in the opposite direction when he's time is up. Keep on pushing through to make the community a better place.

[Zac T]

He doesn't really scare me as much as most. I at least know where he stands. I rather that, then deal with those who speak a good game, but fail to show up when really needed.  I've been around a while now, lived through multiple governors, presidents, mayors, etc. Graduating high school prior to desegregation, my parent's generation have seen much worse.

Despite those that want to stop progress, progress has continued. Take it as a badge of honor that there are those who now feel so threatened with the progress, that they expose their true selves with tactics to try to preserve an old unequitable way of life.

With politics, they come and go and swing in multiple directions as time goes on. Yeah, he may screw up New College. But where there's a ying, there's a yang. Opportunity will be opened elsewhere. Demographics show that Florida is getting more purple every day, so what he's doing right now (that the beating he's taking nationally) is more likely to swing things in the opposite direction when he's time is up. Keep on pushing through to make the community a better place.

I agree with just about everything minus the demographics part. Florida is moving further and further away from that swing state it once was. State data from the Division of Elections show that new residents are twice as likely to be Republicans than Democrats and even outgain NPA's. Black and Asian in-migration has slowed down considerably over the last 5 years while White and Latino in-migration has increased. The fastest growing parts of our state are Republican strongholds such as Southwest Florida and Polk County.

You're seeing leftward swings in a few places such as Jacksonville and Orlando where Duval, Clay, Orange, and Seminole counties have all shown consistent leftward trends as well as the college towns, Gainesville and Tallahassee. However these slow progressions are not enough to offset the harsh rightward swings of once competitive places such as Volusia, Flagler, Pasco, and St Lucie counties.

I think Florida can and will be competitive again but Republicans have a clear and increasing edge in the state and demographics no longer play into Democrats' favor as more Latinos outside of traditionally conservative Cubans have become open to Republican policies

[simms3]

I'm so glad they are finally doing this.  I've spent most of my life wondering why they are keeping UNF so teeny tiny compared to UCF and USF.  You can see how much more UCF and USF have benefited those respective metros for being bigger, more powerful universities.  Meanwhile, they have had this weird mentality that UNF is a "boutique" university, when really it is a state school in the country's 3rd largest state by population, and the only somewhat large university that Jax has.  They've been treating it like it is Cal Tech meets Middlebury, and hate to break it to the lofty elitist circle types that often apply these notions to everything they run and donate to, but it is a standard state school meant to be churning out skilled workers en masse for our growing metro area.

[simms3]

We have has a handful of faculty walk away due to DeSantis. I'm sure many more will follow with the 'post-tenure review'. I might be one of them. Personally, I think rushing to get 9000 students will be disastrous.

I have a friend who is a tenured professor there.  This person has told me a lot about their experience on campus (especially post-COVID), and if a lot of lefties left due to Desantis, based on what this person has told me, GOOD.  Some cray cray stuff happening and y'all forget, but not everyone is a commie woke gobbledy gook fart sniffer on this board.  I jest, but only partially.

[vicupstate]

He doesn't really scare me as much as most. I at least know where he stands. I rather that, then deal with those who speak a good game, but fail to show up when really needed.  I've been around a while now, lived through multiple governors, presidents, mayors, etc. Graduating high school prior to desegregation, my parent's generation have seen much worse.

Despite those that want to stop progress, progress has continued. Take it as a badge of honor that there are those who now feel so threatened with the progress, that they expose their true selves with tactics to try to preserve an old unequitable way of life.

With politics, they come and go and swing in multiple directions as time goes on. Yeah, he may screw up New College. But where there's a ying, there's a yang. Opportunity will be opened elsewhere. Demographics show that Florida is getting more purple every day, so what he's doing right now (that the beating he's taking nationally) is more likely to swing things in the opposite direction when he's time is up. Keep on pushing through to make the community a better place.

I disagree that progress has continued, just the opposite actually. Wasting tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on passing numerous unconstitutional laws, then fighting losing battles to preserve them, only makes a few lawyers rich. Deliberately leaving a congressional seat open for many months unnecessarily is a petty, vindictive act that only hurts people trying to get their VA or SS benefit issues resolved. Spending tax money and probably breaking a few laws in the process to execute a B.S. MAGA stunt that exploits the poorest of the poor is shameful. Single handily eliminating a minority US House member would make Lester Maddox or George Wallace proud. Implementing a white-washed fictional  version of history would too.

DeSantis is essentially a dictator as not one member of the Legislature or state Judiciary will oppose him. I live in a state with a GOP Governor and legislature and yet they do not and not surrender all their power to him.

Even if DeSantis is replaced with a great Governor, you have lost eight years of progress you could have had, plus however long it takes to amend for all the harm he has done, which could be even longer.
 

[marcuscnelson]

I'm so glad they are finally doing this.  I've spent most of my life wondering why they are keeping UNF so teeny tiny compared to UCF and USF.  You can see how much more UCF and USF have benefited those respective metros for being bigger, more powerful universities.  Meanwhile, they have had this weird mentality that UNF is a "boutique" university, when really it is a state school in the country's 3rd largest state by population, and the only somewhat large university that Jax has.  They've been treating it like it is Cal Tech meets Middlebury, and hate to break it to the lofty elitist circle types that often apply these notions to everything they run and donate to, but it is a standard state school meant to be churning out skilled workers en masse for our growing metro area.

It's struck me as interesting that UNF seems to be upset at the notion of the city's excitement about the prospect of a UF downtown campus while at the same time not demonstrating especially much interest (until now) in becoming more like UF in a way where they could garner similar interest. Frankly I get the sense that UNF, and perhaps to some degree many of this city's academic institutions seem all too happy to sit in their forested cocoons and wonder why no one's paying attention to them. UF takes a greater (even if often insufficient) interest in physically being part of Gainesville than most of the schools here.

[thelakelander]

Even if DeSantis is replaced with a great Governor, you have lost eight years of progress you could have had, plus however long it takes to amend for all the harm he has done, which could be even longer.

For my parent's generation, they grew up in a time where they could not live (if they wanted too) in a Riverside or San Marco or drive through GA or SC without a fear in mind. Whenever the DeSantis talk starts up, a conversation with that generation, really puts things in perspective.

Over the last few years, I've had the privilege to work with a lot of Gullah communities, including those in South Carolina. Regardless of what DeSantis is doing (or not doing), we're on the ground moving and improving things from the bottom up and in many ways, what we're accomplishing in this region can only be dreamed of by similar communities in Savannah, Charleston, etc.

On our end, we're continuing to make progress in ways that trickle down economics have not done for these communities, regardless of the political swings at the federal and state levels. Great or bad governor, there's important work to be done that Tallahassee isn't equipped to lead. That guy is term limited and will be gone. We have just as much ability to undo what he's done as he's had to do what he's done. Its from that perspective and lens, I push forward with. For those in the Florida Democratic party, that group should be using these eight years to find someone competent to run. No more Charlie Crist please.