DeSantis announces Turning Point USA partnership at New College visit
Gov. Ron DeSantis greets supports at an event at New College of Florida in Sarasota on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025.
- New College of Florida’s spending has increased from $53 million to $93 million since 2020-21.
- The college has seen a decline in test scores, GPA, retention, and graduation rates.
- Critics argue that politically appointed administrators lack the necessary experience to run a higher education institution.
- The author suggests turning the school over to its alumni to manage.
I have written guest columns detailing how the current administration at New College of Florida has been burning through piles of taxpayer cash while performing worse by almost every metric.
Now that the Florida DOGE report is out, critics like me may have been too easy on New College.
Its spending has gone from $53 million in 2020-21 to $93 million – yet it has been plummeting in test scores, GPA, retention, graduation rates and first-time-in-college attendance.
Meanwhile, the current staff-to-student ratio stands at one staff member for every two students.
Clueless administrators
New College seems to believe that if you have a difficult problem, surely a politician is the answer.
And the school seems to believe that if you have a high-level job that requires years of experience, surely a politically connected Tallahassee operative will make an effective substitute.
But we wouldn’t ask a random state legislator to repair our car’s transmission. Nor would we hire a Tallahassee lobbyist to pilot an airplane.
Yet top jobs at New College have gone to people whose only relevant experience appears to be that they once attended college.
I’ve been to plenty of restaurants. It doesn’t make me Gordon Ramsay.
Not only do the folks running New College not have what it takes to run a higher education institution, they don’t trust the people who do know what they’re doing.
For example, the school has created a Retention Committee to try to put the brakes on a historically high outflow of students. Yet that Retention Committee has no faculty members on it.
With a 10 to 1 student-faculty ratio, faculty members know the names of every student in their classes.
They advise students in a one-on-one manner.
They have relationships with the students who are – in record numbers – heading for the exits.
But New College of Florida’s administrators have so little understanding of the problem that they don’t know who to ask for help.
Recently, New College of Florida President Richard Corcoran has been making the rounds and claiming that the DOGE report is just a misunderstanding based on the $80 million in deferred maintenance on campus buildings.
But what really is deferred maintenance at a state school?
It simply means that the Florida Legislature hasn’t allocated enough money to maintain state-owned buildings.
I’m not saying Corcoran is solely responsible, but he was speaker of the Florida House when the Legislature failed to properly fund building maintenance.
For Corcoran to complain now is a case of the perpetrator pretending to be the victim.
With three years and millions wasted at New College, I think the Florida DOGE report allows us to safely say that Corcoran and his crew are not failing – they have already failed.
It’s time to roll back New College’s 1975 merger agreement and turn the school over to the alumni who love her and continue to fight for her.
William Rosenberg is president of the Novo Collegian Alliance and a 1980 graduate of New College of Florida.
