DeSantis has railed against the process by which tenure is awarded and GOP lawmakers have imposed conservative education reforms across the state.

Professors from across the country have long been lured to Florida’s public colleges and universities, with the educators attracted to the research opportunities, student bodies, and the warm weather.

But for a swath of liberal-leaning professors, many of them holding highly coveted tenured positions, they’ve felt increasingly out of place in the Sunshine State. And some of them are pointing to the conservative administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis as the reason for their departures, according to The New York Times.

DeSantis, who was elected to the governorship in 2018 and was easily reelected last fall, has over the course of his tenure worked to put a conservative imprint on a state where moderation was once a driving force in state politics. In recent years, DeSantis has railed against the current process by which tenure is awarded, and with a largely compliant GOP-controlled legislature, he’s imposed conservative education reforms across the state.

  • ares35
    7•7 months ago

    college football at that level is revenue-generating; so it’s not really ‘taxpayer money’ that pays those salaries, but rather the income generated from the football program itself (tickets, advertising, licensing, broadcast fees, boosters, etc.). that income also usually subsidizes the school’s sports programs that don’t generate a profit–which is, like all of them, other than mens basketball, and in parts of the country, mens ice hockey.

    • Flying Squid
      18•7 months ago

      I don’t think that justifies the coaches being the highest-paid public employees in the state. You don’t have to pay them exorbitantly high salaries to put the revenue generated from football into other sports programs. In most of the states where it isn’t football coaches, it’s doctors who run the health departments. That makes so much more sense. Who do you want to be the most competent public employee? I would say the one most responsible for stopping people from dying.

    • DarkGamer
      5•7 months ago

      Sounds like they should be private employees if it’s so profitable. It’s odd how we polluted our places of learning with sports programs in the states, by all indications, many sports programs deny their athletes a proper education and a proper salary for their money making activities while the coaches make bank.

      • FuglyDuckEnglish
        2•7 months ago

        Probably couldn’t hack it in the NFL.

        After all, the NFL players are proffessionals at wearing tights and chasing other guys who wear tights. They know when the Coach is just torturing them with more laps and cult-like sayings.