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

[jaxlongtimer]

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.

I hope Simms you are mostly just playing those of us who are not where you are.  That said, universities act as change agent in our society.  Most great advances are either derived by universities or students they educated.  Conservatives like you are more about the status quo than making great changes.  Liberals or those leaning more that way than not are thus going to be the most likely people to go into education.  They want to move the status quo forward, toward a "better" future than the past.  This clearly runs counter to people like Trump, DeSantis and most of the GOP today who want to turn the hands of time back to some idealize past which many in our society don't associate with.

Regardless, if conservatives think they have a better mousetrap, rather than harassing and intimidating those who disagree with them, they should compete in the market of ideas (that should be a free enterprise mantra of conservatives).  If they fail to prevail, maybe they are advocating for something the majority doesn't buy into.  Forcefully cramming their agenda down peoples throats isn't going to win out in the long run.  There are not many autocrats in history that are celebrated once they are out of power.

[simms3]

Regardless, if conservatives think they have a better mousetrap, rather than harassing and intimidating those who disagree with them, they should compete in the market of ideas (that should be a free enterprise mantra of conservatives).

The hypocrisy (and irony?) here is severe (not about you personally but the fact that you think conservatives are the ones harassing the debate of ideas out of the public square, likely because you conflate the push to ban what are essentially gay porn books from school libraries with shutting down ideas and speech), I just don't even have a comment.  But to address the rest of your reply, I'll quote Cicero on the impending fall of the Roman Republic, from The Republic:

"On ancient customs and old-fashioned men, the state of Rome stands firm."

The compactness and truth of that line are such that the poet who uttered it must, I think, have been prompted by an oracle. For neither the men on their own (in a state which lacked such a moral tradition) nor the state on its own (without such men in charge) could have founded or long maintained so great and wide-ranging an empire.

Long before living memory, our ancestral way of life produced outstanding men, and those excellent men preserved the old way of life and the institutions of their forefathers.

Our generation, however, after inheriting our political organization like a magnificent picture now fading with age, not only neglected to restore its original colors, but did not even bother to ensure that it retained its basic form and, as it were, its faintest outlines.

What remains of those ancient customs on which the state of Rome stood firm? We see them so ruined by neglect that not only do they go unobserved, they are no longer known. And what shall I say of the men? It is the lack of such men that has led to the disappearance of those customs.

Of this great tragedy we are not only bound to give a description; we must somehow defend ourselves as if we were arraigned on a capital charge. For it is not by some accident—no, it is because of our own moral failings—that we are left with the name of the Republic, having long since lost its substance.

[Tacachale]

I worked at UNF for 14 years until going over to the city last week. It's a great university and something very special in Florida that still doesn't get the props it deserves. I can say that increasing enrollment is an ambitious goal, but it's by no means impossible. We have to turn away many students each year. Increasing enrollment will likely involve lowering the academic profile of incoming students, but that'll be temporary. The bigger issue -- and it's a really big issue, is making sure the infrastructure and staff can keep up with the growth. It means more dorms, more buildings and more hires of staff and faculty. Fortunately we have a great president right now and great staff, and if anyone can do it, it's them.

There are other challenges beyond what UNF or any other university can control. First is the metrics the state uses to allocate funding to the universities. The metrics have always been bad in general and unfair to UNF and the "smaller" schools in particular. The clearest example is that the metrics favor schools with lower per-student spending. Well, one thing UNF excels at is its smaller class sizes and attention from the professors. The metrics punish UNF for something we do really well, while rewarding schools that cram students into immense classes.

UNF can maintain smaller class sizes with more students, but that takes additional hires. As others have said above, the state government's policies on education and academic freedom hurts that. It's absolutely making it harder to hire and keep people. UNF has already had professors, and equally importantly staff members, leave because of this. That'll continue to be an issue as long as it keeps happening.

Looking farther down the road, the local community and leadership sees great value in UNF as well as JU, FSCJ, EWU and Flagler, so they'll be able to weather all these issues and growing pains. The important thing is not to lose focus on what really makes it stand out as it adapts for the future.

UNF is already an excellent school. I went to both UNF and UF and I say without reservation that I got a far better education at UNF. In my professional opinion, maintaining that excellence is a matter of continuing and expanding upon the things it does well while adapting for the needs of the region and the state in the future.