No, all Freshman start on campus. In fact, they reduced the number of accepted freshman by a few hundred, a few years ago.
"Public Research Universities have four main sources of revenue.
- Tuition and Fees
- State Appropriations
- Federal Appropriations and local/state Grants and Contracts.
- Auxiliary, Hospital and independent operations, and “other” sources of Revenue (such as Endowment and investment income). For example UF has gotten millions from Gatorade royalties.
Most OOS public universities have had to raise tuition to counter reduce state appropriations. That’s not been the case in Florida.
Revenue from Tuition and Fees has been flat for the last several years (over 10+ years?). They have been frozen or raised it by very little.
State Appropriations have significantly increased. UF has worked with the state legislature to come up with several ways to increase funding.
First, UF would not raise tuition, as long as the state increased appropriations. Keep in mind that the state is paying much of the tuition by Bright Futures or/and the state Prepaid plan. The state has a strong incentive to keep tuition flat by providing state appropriations.
Next the state worked out an arraignment where they would increase funding, but only if the university met a set of performance metrics. This performance based funding is used by all of the State universities. As they improve, the get more funding. This also gave the state legislature confidence that the money is well spent, so they have been increasing funding every year.
Finally, the state has been open to funding capital projects by all of the universities. Every year UF seeks funding for several projects, and usually gets funding for a few of them (as does the other state universities).
For Federal Appropriations, UF has been focused on growing research funding. UF research spending was at a record $942.2 million in 2020 despite the pandemic.
For Auxiliary, Hospital, etc., UF has been working to grow different sources of income. They are one of the best universities at marketing it’s own research.
The University of Florida raised an all-time record $562 million last fiscal year. It marks the third consecutive year that giving has surpassed $500 million.
As long as the economy stays strong (in Florida), we can expect funding to continue.