11 months ago
65
I have yet to see in the media the full, true story of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ war on Florida’s public honors college, New College of Florida. The narrative has been that this is a small college that DeSantis is trying to take over for his culture war and leave it at that. It is true that DeSantis is effectively destroying Florida’s universities with the help of his supporters’ openly hostile resentment of higher education. And yes, he’s making Florida toxic to not just out-of-state students, but Florida’s own students and professors who are deciding it’s best to leave the state and go somewhere less oppressive. Not to mention the medical students who are canceling their residencies in Florida due to abortion laws. But there’s so much more than that.
To begin with, no outlet has even described the unique way New College operates. It’s modeled after the New College of Oxford University in England. There are no grades: all courses are pass/fail. The student is responsible for his or her entire course planning, and there are no required courses. There’s few organized sports, and no fraternities or sororities. This school is only for the most highly motivated students who have the maturity and intellect to chart their own path and create their own approved course structure. New College has always scored at the top of national rankings, such as The Princeton Review and Forbes; and has ranked fifth in U.S. News & World Report’s annual review of public schools for higher learning. It is a very small school, with under 1,000 students, but has produced more Fulbright scholars than either Harvard or Yale.
Yet DeSantis is determined to spend millions transforming this successful Florida institution into a sham school catering to bigoted yokels. He appointed unqualified extremists to the board who immediately ousted the current president. Already, they are embroiled in scandal as the new president, Richard Corcoran, former state House speaker and friend of DeSantis, is getting paid a salary of almost $700,000. His predecessor made $276,000. Corcoran is now the highest paid college president in Florida with the exception of the University of Central Florida, which is 70 times its size. Yet the real scandal is why DeSantis specifically targeted this institution. There’s a reason, and if you don’t know what happened on this campus 10 years ago, you’d never guess.
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