FLA Senate Vote on USF Polytechnic

A potential future fiscal and education disaster just happened because of the Florida Senate. The Senate voted 35 to 4 to make USF Polytechnic an independent school.

The Senate has approved Sen. JD Alexander's vision to immediately create the state's 12th university out of the University of South Florida's branch campus in Lakeland.

Alexander's plan short-cuts a plan already laid out by the Florida Board of Governors to allow USF Polytechnic to split off. The BOG voted in November to allow the campus to do that only after meeting certain benchmarks, including accreditation, increased enrollment and construction of several buildings on its new greenfield campus site in Lakeland.

I wonder if Alexander is going to ask if the school is named after him.

Polytechnic will lose its accreditation once it breaks off from USF. There is no guarantee that the new school will get its accreditation back... ever. The students at Polytechnic are against the split. The faculty is concerned about their future. No one would have proposed the split of Polytechnic from USF, if Alexander wasn't in the Senate. This is a horrible idea.