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Florida’s brain drain continues: UCLA hires University of Miami’s president [1]

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Date: 2024-06-12  

The Los Angeles Times’s Teresa Watanabe reports in “UC regents approve UCLA’s first Latino chancellor, the president of University of Miami” that UCLA has hired Julio Frenk, the president of the University of Miami, to be its next chancellor. Among other things, Watanabe writes:

Frenk has also proved to be a prodigious fundraiser, leading a $2.5-billion campaign for the University of Miami’s centennial next year and quadrupling contributions as Harvard’s dean of the school of public health — helping secure a historic $350-million endowment gift.

Improving funding for public health research is a big deal. Raising money for a school that’s much less rich than Harvard is an even bigger deal. Since the main job of UCLA’s chancellor is fundraising, it sounds like UCLA is hiring the cream of the crop.

As anybody who’s followed recent UCLA events knows, Frenk will have real challenges when he starts his job at UCLA in 2025. I don’t envy him a bit.

Still, I have to ask — how is faculty recruiting going at the University of Miami these days? And how about the University of Florida, Florida State, etc.? Are Florida’s colleges and universities recruiting the same quality of academic superstars that they were getting before Ron DeSantis started his war on education? Sure, UCLA’s hiring of Frenk is just one hire, but is it part of a bigger picture?

In “Why faculty members are fleeing Florida”, Margot Susca, Chaya Tong and Alex Angle reported in December’s Chronicle of Higher Education that the University of Florida saw a 20% increase in tenured and tenure-track faculty resignations in 2022 vs 2021, and that Florida State’s resignations went up 28%. Although they didn’t report figures for the University of Miami, which is private, one has to think that an ambitious campus leader who wants to make a university better will find greener pastures outside the Sunshine State.

One also has to think that while Florida’s politicians continue to attack the state’s educators, Florida universities will continue to see a brain drain.

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