budget cuts and bad morale in Florida universities

I'm not sure to what extent people outside of Florida are aware of our ongoing state financial crisis. Though one of the wealthiest states in the union, Floridians don't pay a lot in taxes, and under the current (Republican Charlie Crist) and previous (Republican Jeb Bush)
administrations, that trend has continued. What money the state does collect is poorly allocated; Florida education and especially universties are severely underfunded. For us personally, all of this is suddenly beginning to hit the fan.

The university system is being required to give millions of budgeted dollars back to the state. All hiring lines for new professors have been frozen, leaving key positions unfilled. Jeremy is no longer allowed to print syllabi; his department can't afford the ink and paper. There's talk of tenured professors being laid off, and of graduate funding dropping while class sizes swell into the hundreds. Morale in my department among both professors and graduate students is as low as I've ever seen it.

And, one of my favorite professors here, a Caribbeanist called Matt Childs, is leaving for better pay and better research opportunities in South Carolina, a state that is, incidentally, much poorer than Florida, but chooses to a reasonable amount of its budget on education. The key reason behind his going: a Florida law that won't allow any state worker to travel to a "terrorist state." He's a historian of Cuba and cannot do his research.

Read more about it here. http://www.sptimes.com/2008/01/23/State/State_universities_fe.shtml