Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has often touted his state as "The Education State," but a new survey shows that many of the people responsible for doing the educating want no part of it.
Tampa Bay Times reports that a big survey of more than survey 4,250 faculty members across four different states – Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas – paints a particularly dire picture of how educators feel about Florida.
"Across all four states, 31% of those surveyed said they were 'actively considering' interviewing in a different state this year," reports Tampa Bay Times. "In Florida, it was about 46% — and 28% said they’d already interviewed."
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DeSantis has made his crackdown on what college educators can teach children a key plank of his presidential pitch, but faculty members do not seem to think this is a positive, as "85% said they would not encourage a graduate student or faculty in another state to come to Florida," while an overwhelming 95% said that the environment around education in the state was "poor" or worse.
Andrew Gothard, president of United Faculty of Florida, tells Tampa Bay Times that attacks on academic freedom in the state are taking their toll on institutions of higher education.
"The brain drain that we’ve been concerned about, and the trends that we’ve been wondering about, based on what we’ve seen here, are certainly happening," he said.
DeSantis, for his part, has welcomed many of the departures, as he said that many of the professors leaving their posts were teaching "Marxist studies."
