"Florida" and "Dickens" are two concepts that don't really seem to go together -- but "Dickensian" is how Richard J. Bookman, vice-provost for research at the University of Miami, describes Florida's current research-and-funding situation. "We are in the best and worst of times," Bookman said, quoted in an article by Madhusmita Bora, staff writer for the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times.
In recent years, Florida has invested a billion dollars or more in luring high-profile research labs to Florida, including a new campus of the Scripps Research Institute, partly as a way of attracting more federal research money to the state. Now, with federal research money tight, state universities are falling on Hard Times.
