Professors from across the country have long been lured to Florida’s public colleges and universities, with the educators attracted to the research opportunities, student bodies, and the warm weather.
But for a swath of liberal-leaning professors, many of them holding highly coveted tenured positions, they’ve felt increasingly out of place in the Sunshine State. And some of them are pointing to the conservative administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis as the reason for their departures, according to The New York Times.
DeSantis, who was elected to the governorship in 2018 and was easily reelected last fall, has over the course of his tenure worked to put a conservative imprint on a state where moderation was once a driving force in state politics. In recent years, DeSantis has railed against the current process by which tenure is awarded, and with a largely compliant GOP-controlled legislature, he’s imposed conservative education reforms across the state.
Talented and ambitious young people from such places leave
Or never realize that they actually have the talent because no one has helped him with it, so they stay with that undeveloped, making the world a lesser place in their lives as well
This is true to an extent, but it’s complicated. Money talks more than cultural vibes, and so to that end, there are plenty of smart and educated young people moving to southern states simply because of affordability. Texas in particular has been attracting a lot of tech workers who don’t want to deal with cost of living in San Francisco or NYC.
The top ten states by net migration are: Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Idaho, Alabama, Oklahoma
While the bottom ten are: California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota
Those bottom five also have the worst housing markets in the country, which probably isn’t a coincidence. Blue states have been torpedoing themselves in the foot by not building enough housing to meet demand and causing prices to explode way past any semblance of affordability. While this data relates to all people, not just young educated people, and is also influenced by things like conservative boomers wanting to join DeSantis in building the Christian Republic of Florida, the effect of housing costs can’t really be denied.
You’re not wrong, it is definitely a housing issue as well, but it’s also an infrastructure issue, it’s just the land and infrastructure can only handle so many citizens living there before it doesn’t work.
Ask anyone trying to drive to and from work in Los Angeles every day as an example of the freeway infrastructure how much it can handle.
Brain drain affects both the states that people are leaving from, and the states people are moving to.
That’s an inherent flaw in that kind of car-centric design. Even then, red states have the same fundamentally flawed design; it’s just not being stretched to the breaking point like a lot of blue cities are. That’s just a matter of time though.
Population density can go way higher than what’s in most of LA without turning it into Manhattan, but you have to make significant investments in transit to support it. There will always be people who want large detached single family homes with 2.5 cars, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it shouldn’t be the only option the way it is in most of the country.