And Dr. Machen wasn't alone, top coach Urban Meyer helped him as he made his address to state, academic and community leaders. The average grade point average of in-coming students is 4.0 --with average SAT scores of 1293.
While the academic picture looks positive, Machen addressed the hardship a slow economy has had on the university.

"We've had to take out $100 million dollars from budgets. We've had to have layoffs, we've had to eliminate some programs and we had to institute enrollment caps and enrollment reductions," said Machen to the crowd that included U.S. Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican from Ocala.

Still UF plans to use nearly $2 million dollars in bonuses to reward it's faculty if only nominally.

Stacey Samuel