John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” took aim at Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ideological renovation of a small state college, along with images of hideous marine life, jokes about their new beefy tree logo, and his own embarrassing college picture.
“We thought tonight it might be worth checking in on New College to see what exactly happened when a bunch of anti-woke crusaders were given free rein and nearly unlimited resources to build a school on their own terms,” Oliver said in the show that aired June 7.
“I’ll give you a hint: it’s not going great.”
The New College of Florida in Sarasota, founded in 1960, had a national reputation as a top public liberal arts college until January 2023, when DeSantis began the move to quickly transform it into a more conservative, classical liberal arts college.
Previously, New College of Florida ranked third in the nation among all public and private universities in producing graduates who earned doctoral degrees, and a 2018 report found that 80% of New College’s graduates attended grad school within five years of graduation.
Since the changes, along with a massive loss of faculty and students, an overhaul of courses and services, and a flood of new money, the New College of Florida has dropped significantly in rankings from No. 100 in 2023 to No. 135 by 2026, in the U.S. News and World Report’s Best National Liberal Arts Colleges list.
What did New College of Florida change?
DeSantis overhauled the board of trustees with a handpicked conservative majority. The new board fired college president Patricia Okker and installed close DeSantis ally Richard Corcoran at an annual salary twice that of the former president.
The board also voted to abolish the school’s DEI office, and Corcoran fired the school’s dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The gender studies program was shut down, as was the school’s gender and diversity center, “which was basically just a lounge with couches and a student-curated library,” Oliver said. Students spotted dumpsters full of books on campus.
Corcoran also brought in “Presidential Scholars in Residence,” which included Bruce Gilly, author of the book “The Case for Colonialism,” which argues that European colonialism was actually a good thing.
“Huge for me if true,” the British comedian said.
Months into the takeover, more than a third of New College’s faculty had left for part or all of the upcoming school year, which Oliver pointed out left some students without teachers or advisers for their majors.
New College of Florida sees drop, big changes in enrollment
Between fall 2022 and the start of the 2023-24 academic year, about 186 of the New College’s 691 students left the school, according to a report from the college’s provost. Enrollment has crept back up, but as Oliver pointed out, the college seemed to want a specific type of student.
Of the 328 new students that year, 115 were student athletes, with 70 of them enrolled just for baseball at a school without a baseball diamond.
“That is multiple dozen too many,” Oliver said, pointing out that the University of Florida, with 60 times more students, had only 37 baseball players that year.
“So they were just bringing in ball players and expecting one to magically appear, like some kind of reverse ‘Field of Dreams’,” Oliver said.
(Oliver didn’t mention that plans for an on-campus baseball diamond were announced in 2024. In May this year, Corcoran said it should be done “by end of summer.”)
Those new baseball players, despite having lower grade averages than other students, also earned about half of the school’s new $10,000 a year merit-based scholarships, paid for with $15 million from the state legislature. They were housed in the on-campus dormitories, with other returning students sent to local hotels or left to their own means.
New College showered with cash
Many of the previous college administration’s problems came down to money.
“But then money has seemingly been no object when it comes to this project,” Oliver said. “In fact, a state audit last year found that the public cost to produce a degree at New College had swelled in 2024 to nearly $500,000, dwarfing what has been spent per student at any other public university.”
At the University of Florida, it was $150,729.
Spending skyrocketed from $53 million in 2020-21 to $93 million four years later, according to a DOGE report released last year.
Corcoran has said $80 million of that was for deferred maintenance on campus buildings, such as mold in the dorms.
This year’s state budget includes plans to transfer control of the University of South Florida’s Manatee-Sarasota campus — and its existing $53 million in construction debt — to New College of Florida.
“Depressingly, it is the exact sort of smash and grab we’re seeing in so many places right now, from public health to newspapers to broadcast news,” Oliver said about all the changes.
C. A. Bridges is a journalist for the USA TODAY Network-Florida’s service journalism Connect team. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday day by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY.
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: John Oliver rips into New College of Florida anti-woke makeover
Reporting by C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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By C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida | USA TODAY Network
