Since childhood, summer meant it was time for leisure and fall meant it was time to go back to school. UF is turning that on its head.
The program, scheduled to begin in Spring 2013, aims to attract 2,000 students to the university.
Students in the program are limited to on-campus enrollment during the Spring and Summer semesters for their four years at UF.
During the fall semester, they will only be allowed to take online courses or internships for credit.
The measures are a way the university can admit more students without overcrowding the already jam-packed Fall semester.
"Half of the 29,000 applications we received were plenty qualified," UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes said. "We just have a limited number of seats to offer."
Students do not currently receive Bright Futures scholarship money during summer. The bill makes Bright Futures available to students participating in this program during spring and summer, just not fall.
Sikes noted that this would open up internship and study abroad opportunities for these students.
There are still many details to work out before anything can be implemented, Sikes said.
She said students should not be suffer from lack of class availability.
"Students should be able to take as many courses as they need to take in the same way as any other student would during the fall and spring to graduate on time," Sikes said.
"We've been conditioned since we were children that school starts in the fall," Sikes said, "but this is an entirely different approach."
Sikes said that students would still be eligible to purchase football tickets as long as they were enrolled in online classes or an internship.
While this is good news for prospective Gators, not all UF students are thrilled about the new program. Some, like Deanna Pinzon, think that despite the opportunity to be a part of the Gator nation, these students won't be getting the total package.
"They would be half-Gators because they're only getting half the experience."
