Many people on the right wouldn’t mind if college professors fled to blue states, and it has happened in some cases. But most of it is media hype, designed to make Republicans look bad.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
Are Professors Really Fleeing Universities in Red States?Florida’s governor, seeking the Republican presidential nomination, has pushed his state and its education system further and further to the right. Texas has banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs from public universities. Some professors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have expressed fears that Republicans are increasingly meddling in their prestigious institution. And the University System of Georgia is on the American Association of University Professors’ censure list for weakening tenure protections.News articles and opinion pieces have raised alarms that significant numbers of faculty members are fleeing, or considering fleeing, jobs in states where universities face increasing right-wing pressure in favor of jobs in states where they don’t—fueling a Southern brain drain.Throughout 2023, the AAUP condemned Republican political interference in higher education, especially in Florida. Its December investigative report into threats to academic freedom, tenure and shared governance in Florida public universities described a statewide faculty “exodus.”“Everyone with whom the committee spoke reported the same thing: faculty are leaving Florida, and they are doing so because the conditions of their employment are becoming insufferable and they can no longer do their jobs,” stated the report, whose authors said it’s based on interviews with more than 65 people, including faculty members, students, trustees and others. “More and more faculty members are, in effect, voting with their feet. Many are leaving the state, often to take positions at less prestigious institutions with more onerous teaching loads; still others are being recruited away from Florida.”The report also referenced survey results from last fall, when the United Faculty of Florida union, the Texas Faculty Association and AAUP chapters in Texas, North Carolina and Georgia combined forces to ask faculty members whether they were considering leaving, and why.The organizations distributed the survey through email and social media. The results from the more than 4,250 faculty members who responded, two-thirds of them tenured, weren’t statistically representative of the feelings of faculty members in those states, and individual faculty members could fill it out multiple times.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY