How Ben Sasse Became a Combatant in Florida’s Education Wars
When the University of Florida’s president, Kent Fuchs, announced early last year that he planned to step down and a search began for a new campus leader, the school was well positioned to attract a top-tier candidate. Set on 2,000 wooded acres between Orlando and Jacksonville, U.F., as it is known, does not have the shiny reputation of some of the nation’s other big public universities, and its home city, Gainesville, doesn’t radiate the charm of, say, a Chapel Hill, N.C., or a Boulder, Colo. But it could be argued that the school is the model of what a public university should be.
It doesn’t go hunting for out-of-state students and the inflated tuitions they bring. Ninety-two percent of it...
