It's good for Jacksonville. I don't know if it's good for UF. Gov. DeSantis commits to another $75M for University of Florida’s Jacksonville campus
The state university system already has an entity in Jacksonville. UF should focus on Gainesville, UNF should be doing any SUS expansion in Jacksonville.
The state allocates $ to UF grad programs in Jax. UF football fans: WE HATE IT! Did any of y'all even know which programs this is funding before ya hated it? (be honest) P.S. There's another 110million coming in from other sources. Here's just a bit on the purpose of the funding: invention/innovation through solutions-based programs developed by UF Health and UF’s colleges of Business and Engineering, which will boost core competencies in biomedical technology and AI, patient quality and safety, health care admin, fintech, and more.” The money is intended to “support the initial phase of development of urban core location in downtown Jacksonville potentially including classroom, multi-use space, student center and related facilities. State funds could be used for planning, design, construction, lease payments and other eligible purposes.”
None of that is why I am not a fan. My concern isn’t on any of that…If it has a UF banner, UF owns it - reputation wise, even though it won’t have the same standards as Gainesville likely, cost a few years from now when no one in Tally cares, and it takes attention away from the core campus at a time that’s more critical than it has been in years. But maybe the admin structure won’t be what it seems.
Don't even care how it is being paid for or what it will be doing. The SUS school for Jacksonville is UNF. If the state wants that stuff in Jacksonville, it should be under UNF.
I don't see an issue here. Plenty of universities have grad programs that aren't located on or even near the main campus.
Being blunt, UF's grad programs in the aggregate aren't on par with its undergrad, so if that's the outcome here, it's really not any different than what's happening in Gainesville. But who knows. Maybe putting a lot of resources into it will help. This is the sort of stuff DeSantis should be doing, instead of using his moronic culture wars to undermine education in the state. (Although, considering his regime's penchant for cronyism, I fully expect that Hosseini and other allies will find a way to get their money's worth on this.)
It is in-line with what De-scumbag, his puppet Sasse and that dirtbag Hosseini want for public universities. They wish to convert them from places of education and promoting free thought to being nothing more than an academy to churn out mindless drones trained only to serve corporate America. Don't believe me, then listed to what Puppet Sasse and UF had to say: City of Jacksonville and University of Florida to explore possible new graduate campus
I don't think highly of Sasse, but he has claimed the opposite to be his goal. Do I trust him? No. Like any other successful politician, he is skilled in the art of using empty words to seek broad appeal.
Why? UF has campuses in the following locations: Apopka, Davie, Fort Pierce, Hialeah, Jacksonville, Jupiter, Miami, Milton, Orlando, Plant City, Sarasota, Seminole, Shalimar, Sunrise, Wimauma, Vicenza
My big thing is kind of a "why?" I've seen universities move to multiple campuses in ways that are successful and in ways that aren't. Honestly, other than monetary commitment, this looks more like the latter than the former. A lot of successful expansions are when a school needs to get a presence in the city. So, for example Virginia Tech's business school has done quite well expanding to the DC area (and A&M to the Houston area) because of the massive captive audience in the city and the distance to the main campus. Leads to a big expansion in potential part-time students who weren't going out to campus. But Jacksonville seems like a pretty small market to support such a thing and a bit too close to Gainesville probably. I'd get a major campus expansion in South Florida, but not sure what Jacksonville is supposed to provide. This looks to me to be more of a boondoggle for the politicians and their favored developers than a true advancement in educational mission. I am open to being persuaded, but I haven't seen any evidence for what Jacksonville is going to do that Gainesville can't.
Some of these are good. Shalimar brings tons of research money to the engineering school. It's in sight of the Eglin AFB gate. A number of universities have on-base research facilities. Milton, I am not sure about. It's licpcated in the county with the highest percentage of cotton land use in the USA. I can't speak for farming research but it is possible. What does JAX bring in? For that matter, Hialeah? Really? Are they researching captive flamingos fed on dog food by the old speedway?
The jax campus initiative has many purposes. The big one that Sasse keeps mentioning is that Gainesville is too small and in order to go from top 25 to top 10 competing against other top universities requires a bigger geographical footprint. I think Uf would have preferred west palm but that fell through. the real question- given sasses ridiculous mismanagement so far of central admin - can the staff at Uf actually pull this off for him? Without boring you all with internal details this is going to be a pretty big lift for Uf and a lot of the guys he has working on this lack higher Ed experience.
