Summary
New College of Florida, once a liberal arts institution, has undergone a conservative overhaul driven by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and allies, who installed a right-leaning board and administration.
Led by Richard Corcoran, the college has hired faculty with connections to rightwing media and think tanks, sidelining traditional hiring protocols, according to an internal letter.
This transformation, viewed by some Republicans as a model for conservative reform in higher education, has sparked controversy, faculty pushback, and a significant drop in national rankings amidst a shift in curriculum and institutional focus.
This is so fucking depressing. My brother went to New College. He’s neurodivergent, so it was a perfect place for him since it allowed him to structure his education in a way that fit his learning style.
All that is over.
What’s left for people like him of college age today? Evergreen? Maybe a Quaker college?
Tbh with the way things are headed it might be best for all Americans that wish to further their education to do it in another country, it’d be safer and more likely to be quality education. Everything here’s getting gutted, dismantled, sold, and traded, in the name of bullshit.
That’s my hope for my kids right now.
Still working out where to go, and of course the (lengthy) process of getting there, as well as an obvious step further than simply sending my kids off to college elsewhere…
But “Not the US” is the answer to far too many questions right now.
As long as they can do it.
This is assuming that international colleges will even accept American institutional credentials for education going forwards. With how thorough this dismantling might be, we might go back to “oh, we didn’t learn about the Civil War up in Nebraska, all we needed to know was how to run the farm” like it was at the turn of the last century.
There are other public liberal arts colleges, and private liberal arts colleges as well though they’re much more expensive, obviously.
Crazy that 40% of the faculty at New College have resigned in the last year - it’s mass exodus
What’s doubly sad here is that New College was not “just” a public Liberal Arts college. It was an educational laboratory and countercultural bastion in a state that has always had a pretty wide conservative streak. There were no set majors, and there were no traditional grades, just granting credit or not and then a narrative statement on your performance. It was so small it didn’t make any significant dent in the Florida educational scene, but it was an important place for its community and an important symbol about the state’s relationship to education. It was always known as a place for kids who were bright-to-brilliant but didn’t fit the mold.
I went to a different public university in Florida (which has been dealing with its own meddling from DeSantis’s ghouls), but I was low-key proud New College was there. This is like shoving a needle under somebody’s fingernails, intentional torture that’s painful out of all proportion to the measurable damage.
That’s not crazy at all, in fact I’m surprised it’s only 40% considering conservative leaders have gutted, stripped and replaced everything the school stands for as well as rocketing down the school ranking lists because of it. I’d be more concerned about the 60% of faculty that remain, personally.
Many are probably trying to find other jobs but may be location locked due to their partner/family. Or jobs may be hard to find because professorships aren’t exactly easy to come by. Some may hope to somehow limit damage and protect at least some students.
Even something as simple as defending the idea that “tenure means tenure,” and riding it out until DeSantis makes that a lie would be laudable IMO.
I went to a public college in Florida, and New College was known to be full of the state’s smartest hippies. My Spring semester bed in the honors dorm, after my first foray to Texas, was freed up because the former occupant transferred from UF to New College.
It’s a travesty what’s happening to it. Students with means or a favorable FAFSA might find some joy at a place like Reed or Oberlin. Evergreen seems like a good option on a similar model. New College being public with that traditionally low in-state tuition was such an important option for some and symbol for others, though.
The real advantage for him at New College, and I know Evergreen is like this, is that he was able to completely structure his education to suit the non-standard way he learned. He did terribly in grade school but really well at New College.
Are Reed and Oberlin like that too? And you’re right, New College being public, unlike those three, made it far more affordable.
DeSantis killed it. Asshole.
Reed may be somewhere on that path; they emphasize interdisciplinary programs and narrative grading. I think Oberlin is more of a traditional curriculum, but it’s been a progressive community since the days of the Underground Railroad. I pretty exhaustively researched colleges in the mid 90s (then promptly chose the one that offered the biggest scholarship and three months later fell back on the best in-state option still available), but my mental data is pretty stale by this point.
My daughter is neurodivergent, but she’s only eleven and so far still claims she wants to attend the nearest physical campus to our house and never move out, which sounds alright to me because she’s fun and cool. We will see how the teen years affect this mindset, LOL.
My 14-year-old kid is also ND but she wants to go to art school. That sounds like a decent fit for a ND person if they have those skills (which she does).