Author Topic: Documenting the damage to higher education in Florida  (Read 2643 times)

Tacachale

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Documenting the damage to higher education in Florida
« on: December 10, 2023, 11:21:32 PM »
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Documenting the damage to higher education in Florida

By JAY REDDICK | jreddick@orlandosentinel.com | Orlando Sentinel
December 10, 2023 at 5:30 a.m.

A scathing new report documents the “horrifying” deterioration of higher education in Florida.

It should be required reading for every college student — and come to think of it, every taxpayer, too.

For the first time, the report lays out in disturbing detail the extent of the damage done to a once-great system by Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Legislature and their allies in the higher education bureaucracy, which has been politicized to unprecedented levels, with disastrous results. As much as anything, this will be the destructive legacy DeSantis leaves behind when he eventually leaves office.

“What has happened in Florida’s colleges and universities over the past couple of years is a tragedy for Florida students and their families,” said Irene Mulvey, a mathematics professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut and president of AAUP, the American Association of University Professors, which compiled the report.

...

Orlando Sentinel article: https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/12/10/damage-higher-education/

The report from the American Association of University Professors: https://www.aaup.org/report/report-special-committee-political-interference-and-academic-freedom-florida%E2%80%99s-public-higher
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jaxlongtimer

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Re: Documenting the damage to higher education in Florida
« Reply #1 on: December 11, 2023, 12:28:11 AM »
This aligns with the thread I previously created and am reposting here and to which I and the article came to a similar conclusion:

https://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,37788.0.html

Red States (starring FL) Suffering Brain Drain

This article in the New Republic highlights the damage the GOP is doing to red states and, ultimately, to the nation at large.  Leading the pack, Ron DeSantis.  It will take decades for Florida to recover from the damage he, and his lackeys in the Legislature, have done, if the State ever recovers. 

Culture wars ran the movie industry out of Jacksonville over 100 years ago and it never came back.  Expect the same on a much grander scale for Florida today.  Expect our quality of life and our economy to suffer for, possibly, the entire lifetimes of most of those reading this post.

Highlights are mine.

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The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now.
As conservative states wage total culture war, college-educated workers—physicians, teachers, professors, and more—are packing their bags.

....Republican-dominated states are pushing out young professionals by enacting extremist conservative policies. Abortion restrictions are the most sweeping example, but state laws restricting everything from academic tenure to transgender health care to the teaching of “divisive concepts” about race are making these states uncongenial to knowledge workers.

The precise effect of all this on the brain drain is hard to tease out from migration statistics because the Dobbs decision is still fairly new, and because red states were bleeding college graduates even before the culture war heated up. The only red state that brings in more college graduates than it sends elsewhere is Texas. But the evidence is everywhere that hard-right social policies in red states are making this dynamic worse.

The number of applications for OB-GYN residencies is down more than 10 percent in states that have banned abortion since Dobbs. Forty-eight teachers in Hernando County, Florida, fed up with “Don’t Say Gay” and other new laws restricting what they can teach, resigned or retired at the end of the last school year. A North Carolina law confining transgender people to bathrooms in accordance with what it said on their birth certificate was projected, before it was repealed, to cost that state $3.76 billion in business investment, including the loss of a planned global operations center for PayPal in Charlotte. A survey of college faculty in four red states (Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina) about political interference in higher education found a falloff in the number of job candidates for faculty positions, and 67 percent of the respondents said they would not recommend their state to colleagues as a place to work. Indeed, nearly one-third said they were actively considering employment elsewhere....

....The culture war moved slowly into state politics, because, at first, Republicans didn’t have much of a foothold there. From 1971 to 1994, Democrats held most governorships. That flipped in 1995, and for the next dozen years, Republicans held the majority of governorships. But Republican governors still couldn’t advance the culture-war agenda, because state legislatures remained dominated by Democrats.

That changed with the 2010 election. In a historic realignment largely unrecognized at the time, the GOP won a majority of governorships and legislative chambers. Today, Republicans control a 52 percent majority of governorships and a 57 percent majority of state legislative bodies, and in 22 states Republicans enjoy a “trifecta,” meaning they control the governorship and both legislative chambers (or, in the case of Nebraska, a unicameral legislature). At the time Dobbs was handed down, Republicans enjoyed even greater reach, with trifectas in 23 states.

The very last restraint on Republicans waging full-scale culture war—the presence of college graduates under the GOP tent—was removed by the 2016 presidential election. College graduates have always tended to be fairly liberal on social issues, but until the 1990s they were pretty reliably Republican, because college grads made more money and didn’t want to pay higher taxes. Even Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee caricatured by Republicans as an “egghead,” won only about 30 percent of college graduates in 1956. The Democrats’ egghead share crept up after that, but it wasn’t until 1992 that a Democrat, Bill Clinton, won the college vote (with a 43 percent plurality in a three-way race). Four years later, Clinton lost it to Bob Dole, and for the next two decades Joe College seesawed from one party to another. As recently as 2012, Mitt Romney eked out a 51 percent majority of college graduates.

But with the arrival of Donald Trump, college graduates left the Republican fold for the foreseeable future. Trump dropped the Republican share to 44 percent in 2016 and 43 percent in 2020. If Trump wins the nomination in 2024, the GOP’s share of college voters could drop below 40, and I don’t see any of Trump’s challengers for the Republican nomination doing much better. It isn’t clear they even want to, because today’s GOP sees college graduates as the enemy....

....Since January 2021, 18 states have imposed restrictions on how teachers may address the subjects of race and gender, according to Education Week’s Sarah Schwartz. These include most of the Dobbs Fourteen and a few add-ons, including Florida and New Hampshire. According to a 2022 study by the RAND Corporation, legislative action not only accelerated after 2021 but also became more repressive, extending beyond the classroom to restrict professional development plans for teachers. Let’s call these teacher-harassing states the Morrison Eighteen, in honor of the late Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, whose The Bluest Eye is number three with a bullet on the American Library Association’s 2022 list of books most frequently targeted for removal. (The 1970 novel ranked eighth in 2021 and ninth in 2020.)

Taking a tour of the Morrison Eighteen, we find Texas teachers quitting at a rate that’s 25 percent above the national average. In Tennessee, the vacancy rate for all public schools is 5.5 percent, compared to a national average of 4 percent. South Carolina has teacher shortages in 17 subject areas this school year, more than any other state.

But Governor Ron DeSantis’s Florida is the undisputed champ. A 2022 study led by Tuan D. Nguyen of Kansas State University found that Florida had the most teacher vacancies in the country, followed by Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama (all Morrison Eighteen states). Florida also logged the highest number of underqualified teachers.

The availability of state-level data is spotty, but teacher shortages in the Morrison Eighteen states would appear to be getting worse. According to Nguyen’s website, Florida’s teacher vacancies increased 35 percent in the school year after his study was published. Plugging in calculations from the Florida Education Association, teacher vacancies rose another 15 percent in the current school year. In Texas, the number of teacher vacancies more than doubled in the year after Nguyen’s study, and in South Carolina they increased 57 percent. (In fairness, this isn’t happening in all 18 states: Teacher shortages declined in Alabama and Mississippi.)

The culture-war capital of the United States is Tallahassee, Florida, thanks to DeSantis and his (thus far, frustrated) ambition to win the Republican nomination for president. Don’t Say Gay? Check. Don’t Say Race? Check. Pee Where Your Birth Certificate Says? Check. No Kids at Drag Shows? Check. No Preferred Pronouns in Class? Check. Go Ahead and Stuff a Permitless Glock Down Your Britches? Check. Florida also limited abortions to the first six weeks, but six weeks wasn’t quite reactionary enough to include Florida among the Dobbs Fourteen.

Frustration boiled over in Florida’s Hernando County last May, when hundreds of people showed up at a school board meeting to protest that a fifth-grade teacher named Jenna Barbee was put under investigation for showing her students Strange World, an animated Disney adventure film from 2022. Barbee’s offense was that one of the characters happened to be gay. “No one is teaching your kids to be gay,” a teacher named Alyssa Marano said at the meeting. “Sometimes, they just are gay. I have math to teach. I literally don’t have time to teach your kids to be gay.” After the meeting, 49 teachers, including Marano and Barbee, either quit or retired en masse.

Florida is also a recognized national leader in the harassment of college and university professors. Working with his majority-Republican legislature, DeSantis prohibited Florida’s public institutions of higher learning from maintaining diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs; he effectively ended tenure at public universities by requiring post-tenure reviews every five years; and he seized control of New College, a well-regarded public institution in Sarasota, abolishing, through a handpicked board of trustees, its gender-studies program, pushing out the school president, denying tenure to five faculty members on political grounds, and abolishing gender-neutral bathrooms.

Amid this tumult, Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts, offered a place to any New College student who wished to transfer, at the same price they were paying the state of Florida. About 12 percent of the New College students applied for transfer, and in the end roughly three dozen students departed sunny Tampa Bay for the chilly Berkshires. About 40 faculty members left with them, and U.S. News & World Report dropped New College’s ranking from 76 to 100.

An August survey sponsored by the American Association of University Professors demonstrated low morale among faculty in the Morrison Eighteen states of Florida, Georgia, and Texas. But nowhere was morale worse than in Florida, where 47 percent said they were seeking positions in another state. “I’m a professor,” one Floridian who called himself “Brodman_area11” posted on Reddit in late September. “My university is like watching all the rats escape from the sinking ship. My department alone has lost two pediatricians, and we can’t seem to be able to recruit any qualified replacements. It’s going to be a diaspora.”

And good riddance to them, Florida Republicans would likely say. But that fails to recognize how important university communities, public and private, are in creating and sustaining a state’s economic growth. “The college,” Karin Fischer noted in a recent report by The Chronicle of Higher Education titled College as a Public Good, “has become the one institution that remains in cities and rural regions alike long after the factory shuts down or the corporate headquarters pulls up stakes.” A college isn’t an easy thing to move. And although colleges sometimes go out of business, it doesn’t happen a lot. Of the nation’s 3,600 nonprofit institutions of higher learning, only about five to 12 close each year. We lose more factories than that every day....

....At this point in the discussion, someone is bound to ask: If red states are so awful, why are so many people moving there? It’s true. Between 2020 and 2022, the five states with the biggest net population growth were all red: Idaho, Montana, Florida, Utah, and South Carolina. The two biggest net population losers, meanwhile, were blue states: New York and Illinois. I just got done telling you what terrible places Oklahoma and Tennessee have become to live in. But Oklahoma and Tennessee are two of the fastest-growing states in the country. How can that be?

Part of the answer is that not many of us move at all, so broad migration patterns are not so consequential as you might think. The big migration story is that Americans have grown steadily less geographically mobile for most of the past century. As the Berkeley sociologist Claude S. Fischer pointed out two decades ago, the idea of the United States as a rootless nation, promoted by writers as varied as Vance Packard and Joan Didion, is simply wrong—a fantasy derived from the historical memory of westward expansion during the nineteenth century. Today, even immigrants tend to stay put once they arrive in the United States. During the past decade, the percentage of the entire population that moved from one state to another in any given year never rose above 2.5 percent, not even during the Covid pandemic. Even movement from one county in a given state to another is about half what it was before 1990....

....But there’s an exception to the American reluctance to migrate: Joe (and Jane) College. College-educated people move a lot, especially when they’re young. Among single people, the U.S. Census Bureau found, nearly 23 percent of all college-degree holders moved to a different state between 1995 and 2000, compared to less than 10 percent of those without a college degree. Among married people, nearly 19 percent of college-degree holders moved, compared to less than 10 percent of those without a college degree. More recent data shows that, between 2001 and 2016, college graduates ages 22 to 24 were twice as likely to move to a different state as were people lacking a college degree.

The larger population may prefer to move—on those rare occasions when it does move—to a red state, but the college-educated minority, which moves much more frequently, prefers relocating to a blue state. There are 10 states that import more college graduates than they export, and all of them except Texas are blue. (I’m counting Georgia, which is one of the 10, as a blue state because it went for Joe Biden in 2020.) Indeed, the three states logging the largest net population losses overall—New York, California, and Illinois—are simultaneously logging the largest net gains of college graduates. It’s a sad sign that our prosperous places are less able than in the past—or perhaps less willing—to make room for less-prosperous migrants in search of economic opportunity. But that’s the reality.

Meanwhile, with the sole exception of Texas, red states are bleeding college graduates. It’s happening even in relatively prosperous Florida. And much as Republicans may scorn Joe (and Jane) College, they need them to deliver their babies, to teach their children, to pay taxes—college grads pay more than twice as much in taxes—and to provide a host of other services that only people with undergraduate or graduate degrees are able to provide. Red states should be welcoming Kate and Caroline and Tyler and Delana. Instead, they’re driving them away, and that’s already costing them dearly.

https://newrepublic.com/article/176854/republican-red-states-brain-drain


Charles Hunter

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Re: Documenting the damage to higher education in Florida
« Reply #2 on: December 11, 2023, 09:04:45 AM »
And DeSantis and his co-conspirators welcome the departure of those "woke, commie, pinko, grooming" faculty. Then they can hire more from Hillsdale College and Liberty University. The real damage, when high school seniors - both in-state and outside - stop enrolling, and Florida college graduates don't get prestigious jobs, will be after DeSantis is in his new gig as a commentator on Fox or AON.

simms3

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Re: Documenting the damage to higher education in Florida
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2023, 10:12:42 AM »
Liberals/progressives literally don't understand younger generations of traditionalists and conservatives (and now even moderate type people alike).  Unlike the materialist boomer generation that couldn't bear to tell their friends that they had a child who *didn't* attend some college and join some greek life, we don't care to send our children to college "just to go to college and get a 'prestigious' job".  We have seen how colleges (and now high schools down to elementary schools) have indoctrinated children to have literally the opposite world view on everything from their parents, and to hate their own parents.  Families are divided simply for sending children off and forking over tons of money for college.  Now if a child really wants to become an architect or engineer, etc, then they need to go to college to specifically study that.  I don't believe those fields are being particularly impacted by DeSantis or others.

If your kid has no idea what he or she (and there is obviously apparently only to us only he or she) wants to do, why are you going to shell out a fortune to lose your kid to the woke indoctrination factory at most of these liberal arts colleges/programs?  It's literal insanity, and sometimes you never get your kid back.  Instead, he or she can start working early, learn on the job some real skills, and get a head start.  I know SO MANY success stories from this track.  Also, as I have regrettably found out, getting married earlier is actually better.  Especially if you want to have kids.  Our culture, from these institutions of higher learning, has promoted this childless, self-love career first lifestyle, and it's all a bag of hot air and won't actually succeed in keeping up our own population (in other words, it's literally unsustainable).

Many if not most jobs don't technically require a degree to know how to do them (even if currently they are requiring a degree 'for no reason').  There will be a paradigm shift.  There's a total lack of real tangible skills these days and that need will start to be filled by young people choosing to learn such skills and go into trades rather than go to college, get drunk all the time, and learn a bunch of BS.

As taxpayers, we believe that higher education is doing more harm to this country than good, right now.  So I applaud DeSantis for taking a stab at bringing some of that harm to an end.

Liberals/progressives are so blinded in their own "wisdom" about things that they cannot possibly comprehend the thought process going on in the more conservative, religious and traditionalist world.  It's an utter chasm of reason.

So I cry hogwash on all of this.  Good for DeSantis!
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Ken_FSU

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Re: Documenting the damage to higher education in Florida
« Reply #4 on: December 11, 2023, 11:20:57 AM »
If your kid has no idea what he or she (and there is obviously apparently only to us only he or she) wants to do, why are you going to shell out a fortune to lose your kid to the woke indoctrination factory at most of these liberal arts colleges/programs?  It's literal insanity, and sometimes you never get your kid back.  Instead, he or she can start working early, learn on the job some real skills, and get a head start.  I know SO MANY success stories from this track.

Respectfully, if your goal is to set your child up for financial stability in life, I could not possibly agree with this less.

Of course there are successful people who didn't graduate college, but these people are the exception, rather than the rule. Statistically, for every 5 people who make it big without a degree, there are 95 who find themselves working too hard, for too little, with limited upward mobility. I've got all the respect in the world for the service industry, physical laborers, tradesman, etc. But as a parent, I don't want my child's body to break down at age 50 with no medical benefits or 401k to fall back on.

Any perceived short-term gain or head start from entering the workforce straight out of high school is going to get wiped out in less than five years by those with college degrees.

Specifically, recent college graduates (aged 22-27) make $52k per year, on average. Identically aged high-school graduates without a degree make $30k, on average. Long term, college graduates earn 84% more than those with only a high-school degree.

The current unemployment rate is three times higher for those without college degrees (6.9% vs. 2.1%).

And even if you consider many college programs to be "woke" fluff, 92.2% of college programs and 94.7% of college graduates produce median earnings/annual earnings higher than the median earnings for those whole only graduated high school. Empirically, per Federal Reserve data, almost any college degree is better than no college degree.

You can't expect to forego formal college and learn on-the-job skills for career tracts like medicine, or engineering, or corporate finance, or data science, or law, or transportation planning, or education. Is it possible? Sure, in isolate cases. Is it efficient and good for gross production to shift the onus of training and certifying high school graduates to those already bogged down in contributing to output? It just doesn't make sense.

Is the current college system perfect? Of course not. But you'll never be able to convince me that the hard skills learned in college (and the soft skills, for those of you who have hired someone who attended college virtually during the lockdown can attest to) are superfluous and don't contribute to success in the workforce. We shouldn't be discouraging college enrollment. We should be making college enrollment equitable and available to anyone who wants it.

And as someone who works with several colleges here in Florida, it is absolutely tragic how the Governor has poisoned the well and undermined the hard work of so many people looking to bring the best and brightest students and faculty to Florida. Disgusting, even. And it's horrifying that anyone could consider things like book bans, hostile campus takeovers, and the clamping down on diversity, inclusion, and free speech to be productive and in line with our supposed values as a state and as a nation.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2023, 11:30:53 AM by Ken_FSU »

jaxlongtimer

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Re: Documenting the damage to higher education in Florida
« Reply #5 on: December 11, 2023, 01:22:11 PM »
Liberals/progressives literally don't understand younger generations of traditionalists and conservatives (and now even moderate type people alike).  Unlike the materialist boomer generation that couldn't bear to tell their friends that they had a child who *didn't* attend some college and join some greek life, we don't care to send our children to college "just to go to college and get a 'prestigious' job".

I don't know what circles you travel in, but I hardly think you can monolithically represent a single standard for "liberals/progressives."  It is this simple minded labeling and generalizing to grab headlines and sound bites that is causing the partisanship and divisiveness in our Country today.  For those younger that claim they are "traditionalists and conservatives," if college isn't in vogue, why are so many right-wingers determined to mettle with our universities and colleges.

Quote
We have seen how colleges (and now high schools down to elementary schools) have indoctrinated children to have literally the opposite world view on everything from their parents, and to hate their own parents.  Families are divided simply for sending children off and forking over tons of money for college.  Now if a child really wants to become an architect or engineer, etc, then they need to go to college to specifically study that.  I don't believe those fields are being particularly impacted by DeSantis or others.

Explain how colleges and schools "indoctrinate" kids.  You expect all kids to think alike and just like you or they are indoctrinated?  What if i thought you were the one indoctrinated because I don't see eye to eye to you?  What families are "divided" by college?  If kids didn't go to college, they would be divided even sooner entering the work force.  College is actually a hybrid of independence and dependence, a transitioning process into the real world, for most.  As to the impact of DeSantis, watch how many medical and legal scholars leave the state along with liberal arts teachers.  Did you know that many architects have to take art and history classes to advance their studies?  Do think engineers only study math and not the sciences that DeSantis and his ilk portray as "woke"?

Quote
If your kid has no idea what he or she (and there is obviously apparently only to us only he or she) wants to do, why are you going to shell out a fortune to lose your kid to the woke indoctrination factory at most of these liberal arts colleges/programs?  It's literal insanity, and sometimes you never get your kid back.  Instead, he or she can start working early, learn on the job some real skills, and get a head start.  I know SO MANY success stories from this track.  Also, as I have regrettably found out, getting married earlier is actually better.  Especially if you want to have kids.  Our culture, from these institutions of higher learning, has promoted this childless, self-love career first lifestyle, and it's all a bag of hot air and won't actually succeed in keeping up our own population (in other words, it's literally unsustainable).

Glad life is all roses for you.  But, every person has different life experiences and maturity timelines.  Your attitude that is what is good for you must be good for everyone is typical of the right wing trying to impose their rigid standards (and, at times, religion, etc.) on others.  I don't know anyone of any political stripe that doesn't support each person pursuing a course best for them, college or not.  This is not a partisan issue that you try to make it out to be.  Same with marriage.  I would suggest many defer marriage today because women, in particular, would like to finish their education and have a career before settling down with marriage and kids.  Also, people today don't socialize the way they used to and this is due, in some part, to a more mobile society and the impact of technology, in addition to women being more independent.  By the way, a recent study concluded that the "ideal" average age for marriage should be about 25 or 26 years old.  Not sure what you call getting marrying "earlier" and how that lines up with this conclusion.

Quote
Many if not most jobs don't technically require a degree to know how to do them (even if currently they are requiring a degree 'for no reason').  There will be a paradigm shift.  There's a total lack of real tangible skills these days and that need will start to be filled by young people choosing to learn such skills and go into trades rather than go to college, get drunk all the time, and learn a bunch of BS.

Just a bunch of inflammatory and unsubstantiated statements mixed in with delusional thoughts about the current state of the world.

Quote
As taxpayers, we believe that higher education is doing more harm to this country than good, right now.  So I applaud DeSantis for taking a stab at bringing some of that harm to an end.

Liberals/progressives are so blinded in their own "wisdom" about things that they cannot possibly comprehend the thought process going on in the more conservative, religious and traditionalist world.  It's an utter chasm of reason.

So I cry hogwash on all of this.  Good for DeSantis!
Substitute "conservatives" for "liberals" and you could be describing your own position here  8).

It is human nature for youth to be open minded, explore the world at large, challenge the status quo, and think differently than the generations before them, since the beginning of time.  It is wrong for conservatives, typically older, to want to "clone" themselves and "lock in" their ways of viewing life on those who follow them.  If this could be accomplished, we would still be living in caves.  Every major advancement in the human race stems from those challenging the status quo of their times, finding a way to do things differently than those before them.  That is the definition of "progress" which is the antithesis of what conservatives wish to see as you demonize "progressives".  And, yes, as bastions for young people, you can expect the college world to revolve around new ways and ideas whether you can live with that or not.

Fallen Buckeye

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Re: Documenting the damage to higher education in Florida
« Reply #6 on: December 11, 2023, 06:40:44 PM »
The articles shared are incredibly sensationalist and misleading. I am a former teacher, and the reasons I and scores of other teachers I know left education has nothing to do with the issues they mention. It's simply a terrible job full of menial tasks that have nothing to do with teaching. The policies put in place regarding testing and standards create immense pressure on everyone while ignoring the science of a human development. Here are what the stats actually say:

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48% of educators are planning on leaving the field due to compensation, while 42% have already left because of the same reason. Expectations are the second most common reason – 33% plan on leaving while 31% have left due to this reason. Well-being is third (31%/23%), leadership fourth (30%/31%), and workplace flexibility fifth (26%/21%).

When you get down to it, the laws and societal changes that have led to the breakdown of the family are making the job harder and harder. The statistics bear out how the gaps in family involvement affect achievement. "Liberals" like to paint people with traditional views as extremists, but it's basically an ad hominem attack.

The truth is that college has been overemphasized. We actually have shortages in the skilled trades as evidenced in all the delays we see in construction projects talked about on this site. Meanwhile we're seeing more college grads struggle to find work because of oversaturation. If brain drain means we lose some of these quacks teaching college I'm all for it.

Signed, Millennial Conservative.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/19/college-grads-unemployed-jobs/

jaxlongtimer

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Re: Documenting the damage to higher education in Florida
« Reply #7 on: December 12, 2023, 01:32:19 AM »
The articles shared are incredibly sensationalist and misleading. I am a former teacher, and the reasons I and scores of other teachers I know left education has nothing to do with the issues they mention. It's simply a terrible job full of menial tasks that have nothing to do with teaching. The policies put in place regarding testing and standards create immense pressure on everyone while ignoring the science of a human development. Here are what the stats actually say:

Quote
48% of educators are planning on leaving the field due to compensation, while 42% have already left because of the same reason. Expectations are the second most common reason – 33% plan on leaving while 31% have left due to this reason. Well-being is third (31%/23%), leadership fourth (30%/31%), and workplace flexibility fifth (26%/21%).

When you get down to it, the laws and societal changes that have led to the breakdown of the family are making the job harder and harder. The statistics bear out how the gaps in family involvement affect achievement. "Liberals" like to paint people with traditional views as extremists, but it's basically an ad hominem attack.

The truth is that college has been overemphasized. We actually have shortages in the skilled trades as evidenced in all the delays we see in construction projects talked about on this site. Meanwhile we're seeing more college grads struggle to find work because of oversaturation. If brain drain means we lose some of these quacks teaching college I'm all for it.

Signed, Millennial Conservative.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/19/college-grads-unemployed-jobs/

I actually don't take issue with most of what you post here.  I would add not having elected officials having the backs of teachers vs. berating and demonizing them doesn't help morale and employee retention.

It would appear that you are talking mostly from a elementary or secondary school teaching perspective. You are likely aware that Florida ranks 48th in the nation in teacher pay (see table below) which you can squarely lay at the feet of your fellow conservatives that have controlled State government for many years now.

I think the articles posted herein are focused more on college level teachers/professors who may be facing different circumstances than you describe.  These persons are better paid, have more leeway/flexibility and aren't subjected to the same testing regimens and "standards" you may be referring to. 

Just as we need the skilled trades, we do need college educated persons to advance our economy.  As they say, it takes a village.  So a brain drain does not serve anyone any better than a shortage of skilled labor.

Why is education underfunded in Florida?  I would suggest that the Florida GOP legislature and governor regularly have pushed tax cutting playing into demands for budget cutting along with prioritizing spending to support non-educational agendas which add up at some point to taking away from fairly paying the cost of quality education (including teacher salaries) and healthcare, mental health, youth programs, etc. that impact what you report from the classroom. 

Additionally, we pay a disproportionate amount for dealing with crime vs. investing in preventative programs and better education, the best crime fighter there is.  Florida's prison population cost a huge amount to support.  In 2023, with about 81,000 prisoners, we rank 19th in prisoners per 100,000 persons among the states ( https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/prison-population-by-state ) in the U.S., which itself is a world leader in incarceration rates.  With a current budget of $2.7 billion for corrections, we pay about $33,000/inmate, triple what we currently pay per student.  This doesn't count the cost of the judicial system or law enforcement.

For whatever reason, at all levels of education, we are facing a runoff of teaching professionals, more so in Florida than other states, and none of it is good for the future of Florida, our society and the country. 
-----------------------
Florida
AVERAGE TEACHER STARTING SALARY
$45,171

#16
in the nation
----------------------
AVERAGE TEACHER SALARY
$51,230

#48
in the nation

----------------------
TEACHER PAY GAP
80¢
---------------------
MINIMUM LIVING WAGE
$49,625
---------------------
PER STUDENT SPENDING
$11,584

#43
in the nation

--------------------------
AVERAGE K-12 ESP EARNINGS
$31,286

#27
in the nation
---------------------------
AVERAGE HE ESP EARNINGS
$40,459

#38
in the nation
-----------------------------
AVERAGE HIGHER ED FACULTY SALARY
$100,126

#13
in the nation

https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank

Tacachale

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Re: Documenting the damage to higher education in Florida
« Reply #8 on: December 12, 2023, 09:32:21 AM »
The articles shared are incredibly sensationalist and misleading. I am a former teacher, and the reasons I and scores of other teachers I know left education has nothing to do with the issues they mention. It's simply a terrible job full of menial tasks that have nothing to do with teaching. The policies put in place regarding testing and standards create immense pressure on everyone while ignoring the science of a human development. Here are what the stats actually say:

Quote
48% of educators are planning on leaving the field due to compensation, while 42% have already left because of the same reason. Expectations are the second most common reason – 33% plan on leaving while 31% have left due to this reason. Well-being is third (31%/23%), leadership fourth (30%/31%), and workplace flexibility fifth (26%/21%).

When you get down to it, the laws and societal changes that have led to the breakdown of the family are making the job harder and harder. The statistics bear out how the gaps in family involvement affect achievement. "Liberals" like to paint people with traditional views as extremists, but it's basically an ad hominem attack.

The truth is that college has been overemphasized. We actually have shortages in the skilled trades as evidenced in all the delays we see in construction projects talked about on this site. Meanwhile we're seeing more college grads struggle to find work because of oversaturation. If brain drain means we lose some of these quacks teaching college I'm all for it.

Signed, Millennial Conservative.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/19/college-grads-unemployed-jobs/

I actually don't take issue with most of what you post here.  I would add not having elected officials having the backs of teachers vs. berating and demonizing them doesn't help morale and employee retention.

It would appear that you are talking mostly from a elementary or secondary school teaching perspective. You are likely aware that Florida ranks 48th in the nation in teacher pay (see table below) which you can squarely lay at the feet of your fellow conservatives that have controlled State government for many years now.

I think the articles posted herein are focused more on college level teachers/professors who may be facing different circumstances than you describe.  These persons are better paid, have more leeway/flexibility and aren't subjected to the same testing regimens and "standards" you may be referring to. 

Just as we need the skilled trades, we do need college educated persons to advance our economy.  As they say, it takes a village.  So a brain drain does not serve anyone any better than a shortage of skilled labor.

Why is education underfunded in Florida?  I would suggest that the Florida GOP legislature and governor regularly have pushed tax cutting playing into demands for budget cutting along with prioritizing spending to support non-educational agendas which add up at some point to taking away from fairly paying the cost of quality education (including teacher salaries) and healthcare, mental health, youth programs, etc. that impact what you report from the classroom. 

Additionally, we pay a disproportionate amount for dealing with crime vs. investing in preventative programs and better education, the best crime fighter there is.  Florida's prison population cost a huge amount to support.  In 2023, with about 81,000 prisoners, we rank 19th in prisoners per 100,000 persons among the states ( https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/prison-population-by-state ) in the U.S., which itself is a world leader in incarceration rates.  With a current budget of $2.7 billion for corrections, we pay about $33,000/inmate, triple what we currently pay per student.  This doesn't count the cost of the judicial system or law enforcement.

For whatever reason, at all levels of education, we are facing a runoff of teaching professionals, more so in Florida than other states, and none of it is good for the future of Florida, our society and the country. 
-----------------------
Florida
AVERAGE TEACHER STARTING SALARY
$45,171

#16
in the nation
----------------------
AVERAGE TEACHER SALARY
$51,230

#48
in the nation

----------------------
TEACHER PAY GAP
80¢
---------------------
MINIMUM LIVING WAGE
$49,625
---------------------
PER STUDENT SPENDING
$11,584

#43
in the nation

--------------------------
AVERAGE K-12 ESP EARNINGS
$31,286

#27
in the nation
---------------------------
AVERAGE HE ESP EARNINGS
$40,459

#38
in the nation
-----------------------------
AVERAGE HIGHER ED FACULTY SALARY
$100,126

#13
in the nation

https://www.nea.org/resource-library/educator-pay-and-student-spending-how-does-your-state-rank

I do take issue with it, because it’s wrong. Overall, recent college graduates are not struggling to find jobs. have an unemployment rate of only 4.4%. Other than during the pandemic, this has been largely consistent since at least 2015-16 and in fact may continue to drop thanks to the strong labor market and real wage growth. https://www.statista.com/statistics/633660/unemployment-rate-of-recent-graduates-in-the-us/

For people 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree, it’s 2.8%, again, already approaching the lowest pre-pandemic levels. That suggests that people with a bachelors and some work experience are not having trouble finding work. Combine that with real wage growth and you’ve got a good time to be a college educated job seeker: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/unemployment-rates-for-persons-25-years-and-older-by-educational-attainment.htm

Yes, unemployment is higher for high school grads with no college experience (4.1%) or no high school degree (6.3%). But even that is nearing the lowest pre-pandemic levels. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/unemployment-rates-for-persons-25-years-and-older-by-educational-attainment.htm

And is there a skilled labor gap? Despite what employers might say, no, there’s not: “ Walking through relevant economic research, Abraham finds no evidence of a structural skills gap, supply-demand mismatch, or labor shortage, despite such shortages being taken ‘as a given’ in industry and policy discussions.” These certification and politicians even count real wage growth as a problem, when really it’s a sign that workers are getting better pay for their work. https://equitablegrowth.org/is-there-a-skilled-labor-shortage-the-economic-evidence-on-skills-gap-and-labor-shortage-concerns/

In fact the strongest real wage growth right now is among the lowest income earners. Can this be improved? Of course; this will be helped if we focus on continuing to grow wages, support labor unions, and affordability for trade schools, certification and yes, college. Similarly, if we want to improve the lot of teachers, we should pay them better, support their unions, and stop electing politicians who attack them. And if we really care about kids suffering from the breakdown of the family, we’d do all that while increasing the social safety net. Of course, none of these are positions conservatives are exactly famous for.
Do you believe that when the blue jay or another bird sings and the body is trembling, that is a signal that people are coming or something important is about to happen?