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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm the parent whose kid got into UF but is going elsewhere, for the reasons I gave upthread. I gave several reasons to avoid UF, and FL universities, but what irritating about so much of the anti-FL animus on this thread is that it's inarticulate and apparently unreasoned. One commenter helpfully spelled out their reasons: too many online courses at UF, and too much TA dependence. Great, but when challenged, these apparent reasons seem to fall apart (as explained upthread). What's left? It looks like people just hate Florida and Floridians. Well, fine, go ahead and hate the nation's third largest state -- I'm not a fan of it either. But does that really help someone -- the OP, presumably -- wondering whether their kid should be interested in attending this particular university?  Maybe start from the assumption that this person doesn't antecedently despise the state it's in?[/quote]

I don’t think the online classes bit fell apart, there is the entire online freshman experience and then a bunch of online classes “normal” kids have to take, particularly for business majors.  To my knowledge, Florida is atypical in this respect, the Arizona schools being the only other system to extensively use online classes.

Too much TA dependence didn’t fall apart either, the poster just said every state school does it which isn’t true.

Lastly, there is the truly laughable endowment of less than $50,000 per student to which no one responded and puts Florida in the cellar compared to a
alleged peer  schools. And the curriculum  changes imposed by DeSantis.  Not to mention the grifting tenure of Ben Sasse as president. 
Then there is the truly min[/quote]

1. Online classes are an issue only if you can't easily avoid them. Maybe that's true in the business school -- I have no idea. If so, that's a strike against the UF business school.

2. Every public research university has TAs -- I'm sure just as many, in many cases more, than UF. I think "TA" is confusingly being used here to refer to adjuncts. If there are a lot of adjuncts, that's bad. My kid looked into this (with parental help), and there's no reason to think this is a problem at UF: in fact, we were impressed that UF has tenure-track faculty where many rival schools rely on adjuncts (e.g. in the music school, one of my kid's side-interests). Again, maybe in the business school has a problem here -- I have no idea.

3. UF's per-student endowment puts it above UMD, VT, and UGA, among other respectable public schools. It's not especially impressive, but endowment size is really only relevant for private universities.

4. I entirely agree about the political shenanigans. Is that a reason to avoid UF? It's just as bad in many other red states. My kid's leaving the country partly in order to avoid this nonsense, but I don't think it's decisive on its own.[/quote]

I don’t know why you keep saying adjuncts are worse than TAs.  I disagree.  TAs are graduate students, that isn’t who I want teaching my kids, they just graduated themselves.  I would never send my kids to a college where they are being taught primarily by grad students.

Also, you know what’s better than having to tailor your schedule to avoid online classes? Attending a school that doesn’t rely heavily on online classes.

The better public schools, like UVA and UNC, have significantly higher endowments per student, $388,00 and $200,000 respectively.  Even medium size privates are in the $200,000 to 300,000 range.[/quote]

OK, but or many schools, a significant part of the endowment really has nothing to do with undergraduates.  For instance, if it is for the law school, there are no undergraduates there.  Same with medical school.  [/quote]

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