Talk:State University System of Florida/Archive 1

Archive 1

Old discussion

• This page is not for universities to cheerlead. This page represents the essentials of the SUS, with links to greater detail on the page for the university.Sirberus 17:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm a academic adviser for a private university and I want to know why the state schools don't have a high population of minorities. The statistics show the numbers are up but the actual number of minorities accepted to the state schools is low. What is being done to correct this problem? It would be interesting to know what percentage of employees are minorities at these institutions. I'm not tallking about the entry level persons nor the maintenance crew or the cleaning people, I'm talking about college administration. The message that is being sent to the minority community seems to direct toward this group or class of people as sub-standard acheivers. Even if you have a token, makes it worse of an image to the minority community. Filling a quota can be seen a mile away. I am impressed by the efforts of U of F to create a position to target the under represented groups, but to fill the position with someone other than a minority is insulting. (137.52.118.239 19:12, 28 September 2006 (UTC))

I removed a line in the article that said that Florida's public and private schools are held in low-regard across the nation. This assertion was made by the fact that some "dating services" do not place Florida's universities in their "elite" categories. This is a patently absurd way to measure university accomplishments and prestige. UF is ranked #13 in US News' rankings of public research universities, 4th in The Scientist magazine's "Best Places to Work in Academia", and fifth in Kiplinger's "Top 100 Colleges." Among other awards, UF's faculty has a Fields Medal and two Pulitzers. UF is also a member of the Association of American Universities, an association of the top 62 research universities in the country. I'm not going to do research on all 12 public universities, but UCF is ranked for its engineering and computer science programs and is ranked by US News, as is FSU and USF. UCF has the nation's leading optics/laser research institute, and FSU, UF, and USF have medical schools with varying specialties, and UF and FSU's law schools are both Tier 1 in rankings. So, in short, it is absurd to rank Florida's university system based on some dating website. 63.138.80.219 17:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Whether you believe the article is "patently absurd" or not is not the issue. The citation is to a verifiable, reliable, and neutral source; the article ran on the front page of the Palm Beach Post. The fact the article is technically self-deprecating only strengthens its reliability. Most newspapers would not run an article on their front page bashing their own state unless they had carefully cross-checked their facts. Please read Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research. --Coolcaesar 17:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, your link is to a "verifiable, reliable, and neutral source" (The Palm Beach Post) but that statement of fact says *nothing* about its relevance to a discussion on the quality of education obtained at Florida Universities. We appreciate your authoritative links to Wikipedia's policy on Verifiability, but I believe the question here is one of relevance. The dating/mating prospects of a Florida graduate is a terribly absurd way to rate Florida schools. If you want to strengthen this article, include "verifiable, reliable, and neutral sources" which speak to Florida graduates job prospectives, acceptance rates at various graduate programs, et cetera. I am a USF Senior who was just accepted to pursue graduate work at Duke... if you want to tell me I'm attending a clown college, I just have no way of believing you. I just read the article you have cited from "The Palm Beach Post" and it is extremely satirical and VERY tongue-in-check, as I expected it would be. You can't honestly cite something that hillarious as verifiable. As if the article wasn't already funny enough (which it truly is) it ends with "SINGLED OUT: Although UF graduates include Pulitzer Prize winners and several U.S. senators, they're barred from these sniffy sites." I would think that anyone with a basic education would realize that this article in the Post is a satiric send-up of snobbish tendencies, and how these prejudices often fail to conform to reality. I'm including a link to this article in the main body of the page... anyone who reads it will immediately appreciate its comic value. Rellman 16:53, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Change

I was bold, and turned the colleges section back into a list sorted by alphabetical order. I looked at the Board of Governor's website and I could not find the breakdown by categories. Also, looking at the history of this page it seems that there has been a lot of reverting and additions. I think the changes I made will be much simpler to maintain and will also prevent edit wars. KnightLago 23:32, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

FACT

UCF is not a Research Flagship. It says in the Sentinel Article that the Legislation created a Tier System. I am sorry but don't make UF, FSU, and USF look bad because UCF isn't added into the equation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.253.37.233 (talk) 18:59, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

The source on the page just says "trio of Florida's top-ranked public universities" and "elite, research-oriented public schools in other states." It does not say those three schools are flagships. It also does not break down the other schools into the categories either. If there is a source then that is fine. But without the source the information shouldn't be arranged in the manner you are attempting. Also, I am not a USF or UCF alumnus. KnightLago 21:51, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

University Categories

Does someone have a source that breaks the universities into the categories as they are now? I mean the regional, state, and flagship university sections. If not I think we should list them by name or date established/opened.

Thanks, KnightLago 23:19, 20 October 2007 (UTC) KnightLago 23:19, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

The most authoritative source I have found that categorizes universities in Florida's SUS is here:

http://www.puaf.umd.edu/puaf650-Fullinwider/handouts-AA-Florida%20Plan.htm

In this article we find that then Gov. Bush explicitly calls FSU and UF "flagship universities":

Among the notable impacts of One Florida: Of the additional 3,202 first-time-in-college students entering the university system whose race and ethnicity could be determined, minority student enrollment accounted for almost 40%, or 1,234, of that increase. Each of the 10 universities increased the percentage of its entering class who are African-American. Furthermore, the rate of growth for minority students at Florida State University and the University of Florida far outstripped overall university system growth and the growth of white students. For example, while system-wide enrollment grew by approximately 11%, the number of African-Americans at Florida State University grew by 21% and the number of African-Americans at the University of Florida grew by 33%. In addition, the number of Hispanics at Florida State grew by 24%, while the number of Hispanics at the University of Florida increased by 19%.

In addition, the "cascading" effect, or the reduction of minority students in our flagship universities that many critics of the One Florida plan predicted would happen, did not occur. In fact, minority enrollment actually flowed upwards toward the flagship universities. Combined, Florida State University and the University of Florida enrolled 577 more African-American and Hispanic first-time-in-college students than were enrolled last year. Governor Bush and Chancellor Herbert were joined by presidents and provosts of universities that showed some of the greatest minority gains, including University of Central Florida President John Hitt, and Provosts Larry Abele of Florida State University, David Colburn of the University of Florida, and Richard Osborne of Florida Atlantic University.

Hope this helps sort out the issue. Sirberus 15:27, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Maintain alphabetical order please

In effort not to show any favoritism or grandstanding don't place universities in order of "Popularity" or so called "Prestige" Please leave a neutral page,

This is mainly directed to placing FSU, USF and U of F above all and makes no sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by UkrNole 485 (talk • contribs) 16:04, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Tier system

The link provided is broken and thus useless to backup claims that a tier system is in place. SB 1710, which the source is supposedly referring to, does not even mention the word "tier", see here. An active link from the Orlando Sentinel talks about a two-tier system, saying it would be between universities and community colleges but that it has not been implemented yet, see here. Please provide sources to backup the sentence you are re-adding so we can discuss here. Thanks. KnightLago (talk) 23:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Admissions data

I reverted edits to the page that restored out-of-date admissions data (from 2007). In Florida there has been a radical change in admission rates and two-year old data is too old to be even reasonably accurate.

May I say I see no reason for this admissions data on this page to begin with - it seems to be cheerleading by fans of schools. So, if you insist on cheerleading then make the data accurate...which means a solid reference back to the university's reference material, not some magazine with old, questionable figures. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.252.231.55 (talk) 12:25, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Endowment sorting

The endowment column is sortable, but the entries were made in such a way they didn't sort the way you would want.

I fixed it by adding a prefix to each entry of the form <span style="display:none">xxxx</span>. It works. If endowments change, simply change the amount and the value of xxxx, making sure to maintain leading zeros. Or if this is too much work, revert, but then change the column so it isn't sortable.--SPhilbrickT 20:12, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I also made the Research and Enrollment table sortable - while the research budget is the natural sort, one might want to see this table and the table above both sorted by school. Making it sortable helps eliminate the potential privilege of a particular order.--SPhilbrickT 13:39, 16 June 2009 (UTC)