A diary by Laura Clawson highlights how Ron DeSantis’s efforts to turn Florida’s New College into a bastion of wingnuttery are causing faculty to flee. But DeSantis’s widespread and relentless assault on higher education is causing serious faculty woes at colleges and universities across Florida, as reported recently by the Tampa Bay Times.
The Tampa Bay Times reviewed records showing an upward tick in staff departures at some of Florida’s largest universities. And, as the Board of Governors discovered this spring, doubts about the state’s academic workplace are spreading fast.
Matthew Lata, a music professor at Florida State University, told board members that candidates were turning down positions in his college “because of the perceived anti-higher education atmosphere in the state.”
Talk of the phenomenon is everywhere, he said. “More and more often we are hearing ‘Florida? Not Florida. Not now. Not yet.’”
Some brain drain examples documented by the Times:
- University of Florida: 1,087 employees resigned in 2022 — the only time in the last five years that the number exceeded 1,000. More than 730 employees had already left UF this year as of May 31.
- University of Central Florida: 103 faculty did not return for the 2022-23 academic year, the highest number in the last five years.
- Florida State University: 136 faculty resigned last year, also a five-year high.
- University of South Florida: 146 faculty left in 2022, up from an average of 95 over the previous four years.
The numbers for 2023 are on track to be worse than 2022.
The Times article offers many examples of faculty facing dire workplace situations, including Carolyne Ali-Khan, who joined the University of North Florida faculty 12 years ago to teach social justice in education.
In January, the state required all universities to list expenditures related to diversity, equity and inclusion, a major focus for DeSantis this year. Ali-Khan heard from a journalist that UNF had included her course in its report. No one at the university had informed her.
She felt increasingly vulnerable as laws targeting unions and easing gun restrictions were proposed and passed. She knew of colleagues who were planning with their spouses and kids what to do in case they lost their jobs.
“It’s not safe here anymore on so many levels,” Ali-Khan said. “It’s not physically safe. It’s not economically safe. It’s not professionally safe. It’s not intellectually safe. That was not true when I got here.”
All-Khan has accepted a new teaching position at Molloy University in New York.
Florida’s higher education institutions are not just seeing their faculty flee at unprecedented levels, but they are facing serious challenges in hiring new faculty. Again, the Times offers many examples, including the following stories:
- A candidate who applied to join the University of South Florida’s philosophy department instead took a job at a lower-ranked school in another state, pointing to Florida’s political climate.
- A University of Florida employee reported giving tours to a half dozen prospective hires, all of whom “expressed mixed feelings about moving to Florida in the current political climate.”
- At Florida Gulf Coast University, open positions that once drew over 200 applicants now see fewer than 20.
This brain drain in Florida will continue until the Presidents of Florida’s colleges and universities start to stand up to DeSantis and speak out against his assaults on higher education. But so far there’s been nothing but crickets.
And if anyone has any doubts about what would happen to higher education across our nation if Ron DeSantis became President, just look to what’s happening in Florida right now. He’s showing you exactly what he would do. Education is always one of the first targets of fascists.