by the Tampa Tribune
Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently announced they will be offering courses online for free, and other schools will likely follow. While some Florida schools offer courses online, we need a college that specializes in online learning. In Tallahassee, we have started a conversation about how Florida will become a national leader in online education, and I believe that includes creating the nation’s first online public university. The current model in Tallahassee is broken, and allowing politicians to push pet projects for their alma mater or local university is not what we need to increase global competitiveness. Instead, we need to develop a system where certain universities can play to their strengths and complement one another. Having a university solely focused on reaching students in rural and urban communities across Florida and around the globe would take us to newer heights of excellence, access and cost-effectiveness — three worthy goals for our state. Whether we like it or not, higher education is changing. We can embrace the change or stay behind the curve.
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