705
‘I’m not wanted’: Florida universities hit by brain drain as academics flee
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
705 points (97.2% liked)
News
23259 readers
4849 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
But won't that mean that everyone will just go to universities in other States? Isn't the point here about a brain drain, not the complete loss of all population.
The people with no brains to drain will stay in Florida presumably.
That depends on how you value your college degrees. If degrees represent real useful career knowledge, then sure. But if they're just tokens handed out to a social network, then why would I leave Florida U if I know an FU degree will land me a good job in a high-paying Florida business? If I'm just working the sales desk of a construction company or doing entry level accounting on my way to completing my CPA license or Real Estate License, who cares whether U. Miami or Florida State is a diploma mill?
There are plenty of very good doctors that come out of Baylor and Brigham Young University, despite both campuses being notoriously far-right. You don't need a liberal education to learn to code. You don't need it to update actuarial tables at a big insurance company. You don't need it to help run a multi-billion dollar media empire.
There is no shortage of good money in cultivating a large loyal contingent of right-wing academics, either. Certainly Milton Friedman and Karl Ichan and Charlie Munger did very well for themselves.
And where will the drained brains even go? It isn't as though Silicon Valley or Wall Street are lacking for far-right ideological leaders. In the end, you're still going to end up working at Exxon or Apple or FOX Media or Goldman Sachs, no matter how liberal your politics. Moving to California won't save you from Peter Thiel or Ben Shapiro.
It's not that having a right leaning political viewpoint will prevent you from learning higher skills it's just that if businesses consider Florida to not be of high education quality then they won't accept their diplomas.
Sure if I can just pay some money and then lie around doing nothing and get a degree that's great, but only if the degree is actually valid outside of Florida. Otherwise I wanted a qualification that gives me options.
The education that's being targeted isn't business school training or software development. DeSantis isn't defunding the petroleum engineering department. This is all revolving around the liberal arts schools, effectively forcing out anyone with a history or english lit degree that doesn't spend the weekends in white hoods.