Interim President Thad Seymour’s advice to the next president of the university to focus on quality over quantity is not only appropriate, but critical. Under former President John Hitt, the school went from a commuter school to the largest university in the country with 68,000 students, a sprawling infrastructure and a notable increase in the quality of incoming freshmen. What it left behind was the academic excellence expected of universities of scale. With its massive resources in the research and commercialization of lasers, optics, simulation and training, computers, life sciences, and others, embedded in a vibrant community, the university’s next chapter should clearly be all about excellence over size.
Originally posted for the Orlando Sentinel’s Central Florida 100.
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