Florida’s online higher ed push takes hold unevenly

ORLANDO — Florida higher education officials tout their efforts to expand online education, but a look behind the numbers reveals a more nuanced reality: The state’s dozen public universities vary widely in how much they’ve embraced virtual teaching — and some haven’t at all.
……. While Florida’s large research universities work to add more online courses, the two smallest schools in the system have different priorities.
New College, a nationally top-ranked liberal arts school in Sarasota, promotes its relationships between students and professors, as evidenced by its 10:1 student-faculty ratio and thesis requirement for bachelor’s degrees recipients. The school is embracing technology incrementally, largely through growing partnerships with other institutions, but by and large, administrators there don’t see online courses as consistent with the institution’s mission.