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The New College of Florida has received a record influx of state funding this budget cycle, according to a report from The Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
The investments were made in the months after Governor Ron DeSantis overhauled the college’s Board of Trustees, who then fired its president; scuttled the employment of faculty members; eliminated its diversity, equity and inclusion office; and began remaking NCF in their conservative, “anti-woke” vision.
The funding, totaling $50 million, includes $10 million in recurring annual support and $15 million in appropriations for costs associated with facilitating DeSantis’s intended transformation of the 700-student college in Sarasota, the smallest of Florida’s public higher ed institutions.
“It is a new day at New College of Florida,” wrote interim president Richard Corcoran, DeSantis’s former education commissioner, who is paid $400,000 more than his predecessor at the college. “With this record funding—the likes of which we have not seen in 20 years or more—we are on our way to becoming the No. 1 classical liberal arts college in the country.”
Enrollment and retention dropped at New College this year, which many chalk up to the disruptive and controversial changes DeSantis pushed. In the past, despite higher retention and enrollment rates, the state Legislature provided much less funding to New College, and even threatened to merge it with the University of Florida.
