New College asks for big boost in funding

President’s plan calls for $400 million over 5 years

New College of Florida President Richard Corcoran presented a business plan to Florida’s university system Board of Governors on Wednesday that asks for almost half a billion dollars from the state over the next five years — a figure largely unseen by the small Sarasota liberal arts school.

The college said it needs a “minimum” of $400 million over that span to achieve the goal it set forward to the Florida Legislature of becoming “a world-class classical liberal arts educational institution,” according to the plan. Corcoran’s business plan for New College has previously been criticized for not being financially viable, according to business experts from the University of Florida.

Any funding would still need to be approved by the Florida Legislature and the governor. If realized, the funding would be far more than the small college has received in such a short period. The smallest school in terms of enrollment in the Florida university system has typically struggled to get even a fraction of that sum, given the many larger campuses with thousands of students and influential alumni in the Legislature and in university leadership positions.

New College’s campus facilities have largely been neglected by the state despite a strong academic reputation.

While the school has seen a windfall in funding this year after Gov. Ron DeSantis, preparing for his run for the GOP presidential nomination, made the school’s conservative makeover a priority, a key question going forward will be if hundreds of millions of dollars will continue to flow in the long term amid the usual political leadership changes.

The business plan includes a projection that New College would increase enrollment by about 100 students per

year up to 1,200 by 2028, largely due to the expansion of athletics at the school.

To discourage students from leaving, the college said it wants to improve student quality of life with “improved facilities (including dorms), food (quality and options), social, co-curricular, and extra-curricular programming.” The plan notes that the college wants to take a more proactive approach to planning student activities, outside of studentled programming.

“In the past, New College assigned most of these quality-of-life issues to students, and such programs were often implemented on an ad hoc basis, according to student interest and impulse,” the business plan read. “Going forward, we will approach these issues proactively and programmatically.”

The college also said it would focus more on college readiness when admitting students in order to improve retention rates.

“More recently, New College has not received a sufficient quantity of highly college-ready applicants, and thus admitted applicants that may not have been fully prepared for New College’s academic rigor,” the plan read.

As of November, New College had 152 student-athletes and six sports, according to the report. By 2027, the college projects to have 350 student-athletes and 23 sports, adding sports such as bass fishing, dance, tennis, golf and rowing.

The school said it wants to achieve increased enrollment in the next five years as part of stabilizing the college’s finances. The plan notes that it needs to “stabilize” attrition rates at the school to hit the metric.

New College’s dropout rate more than doubled and it saw “by far” the lowest retention rate of first-year students in the college’s history, New College provost Brad Thiessen said in an email to staff in October.

Amy Reid, the head of the Gender Studies department at New College and faculty representative on the board of trustees, said in October that the retention numbers combined with the loss in faculty showed that the school’s leadership needed to express a clear vision to students.

“I hope that the administration is going to be able to articulate a clear and inspiring vision for the college,” Reid said. “And that goes beyond just saying, ‘Being the best.’”

The drop in retention and spike in departures from New College comes as Corcoran and the board were tasked by DeSantis in January with transforming New College into a more classical liberal arts school, in the mold of the Christian, conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan. The school’s leadership moved quickly to dissolve the college’s diversity department, abolish the gender studies program, fire an LGBTQ librarian and deny tenure to the faculty members set to receive it.

Meanwhile, in this year’s U.S. News and World Report rankings of top liberal arts colleges in the country, New College dropped 24 spots compared to the previous year to No. 100.

The college’s 2023-24 incoming class of students represented a drop in academic standing compared to previous years. New students admitted to New College had, on average, worse grade point averages, SAT and ACT scores. Much of the drop in average scores could be attributed to incoming student-athletes who, despite scoring worse on average, earned a disproportionate number of the school’s $10,000per-year merit-based scholarships.

Board of Governors member Eric Silagy cautioned Corcoran on the falling numbers at New College during Wednesday’s meeting.

“You need to be careful also of adding the students. At what cost?” Silagy said. “Because you can attract students that aren’t going to have the same standards that you would, particularly at an honors college.”

The business plan also included renderings of what future improvements to the campus could look like. As part of the plan, the college noted the need to improve residential buildings on campus given the current housing crisis. The plan proposed the addition of 400 beds to its current 630 to accommodate projected growth.

To start the fall semester, New College shuttered several dorms due to mold concerns. This removed hundreds of beds from on-campus housing. Incoming student-athletes were given priority in the existing on-campus housing assignments.

The influx of students combined with the restricted housing supply pushed most new and returning students who aren’t student-athletes into living at offcampus hotels.

The college’s board of trustees also approved plans to demolish the Palmer, Reichert and Knight buildings.

The plan noted other ongoing improvements, such as renovating existing buildings, repainting light poles and adding artificial turf in front of the library.

New College has also been negotiating with the Sarasota Classic Car Museum, which sits on land just south of campus and is leased by the college, to have them vacate the property. The college will have full control of the facility before the end of 2023, according to the plan.