The SUS is the overlying body that unites Florida's public colleges, and consists of the following four-year universities:
- University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
- Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
- Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida
- Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida
- Florida International University, Miami, Florida
- Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers, Florida
- University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida
- University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida
- University of North Florida, Jacksonville, Florida
- University of West Florida, Pensacola, Florida
Florida's many community colleges are also under the SUS, as are Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida and New College in Sarasota, Florida.
The SUS uses a rather ugly and eccentric course numbering system. Unlike most colleges, where courses have names like "English 101" or "History 232", courses at Florida public colleges have a three-letter abbreviation followed by a four-digit number.
The introductory writing course, for instance, is ENC1101. ENC stands for English Composition, and each digit in the number represents one facet of the course. The first digit tells you the approximate grade level of the course: in this case, it's a freshman course. The second digit tells you how advanced the course's concepts are within the subject area: "0" indicates no prior experience required, while higher digits indicate classes for majors only. The third digit tells you the scope of the course: in this case, the "0" indicates a survey course. Finally, the fourth digit is used to differentiate different subjects within the same field. Some other examples of SUS course names:
JPN3400 - Japanese language, junior level, advanced, survey. (Third-Year Japanese I)
PHY4422 - Physics, senior level, advanced, specialized. (Optics I)
POS7980 - Political science, doctoral research, highly advanced, highly specialized. (Doctoral Research in Political Science)
Still confuses me sometimes. |
