And recent trends on the campus don’t make it look any better, critics say. Two close observers believe the small school should not be a standalone.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: November 7, 2025
Host: New College has been DOGE’d by the State of Florida, together with all other state universities. The outcome does not make it look good: The small liberal arts college—which has been subject to a conservative takeover and has enjoyed a ballooning budget—looks like a wasteful outlier with a bloated administration. On Thursday, the Board of Governors—the body that oversees the state’s public university system—was presented with the results of the audit. We have the details.
Johannes Werner: The DOGE audit took eight months to complete. It shows New College as an extreme outlier.
Photo by Emily Le Coz via Suncoast Searchlight
In the last financial year, New College had the highest operating expense per student. At $83,000, it spent nearly twice as much as the runner-up. New College had the highest ratio of administrative personnel per 100 students. It had the lowest degree yield of Florida public universities. And it had the by far highest cost per student to produce a degree, closing in on $0.5 million—more than three times that of the runner-up.
The Board of Governors did not take any action on the audit at their meeting Thursday, nor was there any discussion about New College. But the board chair said Ben Watkins—the man in charge of the DOGE audit—will meet with each university to discuss their findings.
The DOGE’ing of New College comes as Ron DeSantis enters his last year in the governor’s mansion. Under his successor, the fiscal largesse of the legislature shown for New College—one of DeSantis’ pet projects—may end.
To be sure, ever since the state introduced new metrics in 2017, New College has looked terrible. Previous campus administrations pushed back against what they saw as criteria that don’t do justice to the achievements of the campus.
The new—DeSantis-imposed—New College administration takes a different tack: It keeps blaming previous administrations and low enrollment.
Two years ago in August, Richard Corcoran—the DeSantis ally who is overseeing the conservative makeover—presented his business plan to the New College board of trustees. Corcoran promised his board that what he called “financial failure” will not happen again.
Are the days of financial largesse over? Richard Corcoran with Ron DeSantis at New College’s Sainer Auditorium for a ‘Socratic Stage’ talk. Photo: Werner
Richard Corcoran: What we’re trying to say to the board of governors—we’re trying to say to the legislature—is, yes, this school was absolutely financially failing, and it needed saving, and we thank you. Because of that, we want you to know that all aspects are being looked at. Not approved; being looked at. That’s what that says. That says, “We’re going to look at this. We’re going to look at this. We’re looking at this curriculum. We’re looking at this aspect of sports.” That part is not approved. That’s why it says at the very beginning of the document that it’s aspirational. But you are approving the business plan for us to go to the board of governors to make that sales pitch—to say, despite the 20-year history of abject financial failure, it will not happen again.
JW: Asked for comment about the DOGE report, campus communications chief Jamie Miller continued the same line of argument via email:
“Today’s report reflects the failed enrollment of previous administrations. Thanks to Governor DeSantis and the Florida Legislature making a bold move to appoint new leadership with clear goals, the impact of New College’s revitalization is already visible with enrollment surpassing 900 students for the first time in history. As enrollment growth continues to skyrocket, cost-per-student and cost-per-graduate metrics will be one of the lowest of all top liberal arts schools in the country.”
But the problems go deeper than lagging enrollment, people with knowledge of the campus say.
Nathan Allen, a New College alumnus, served as Corcoran’s vice president of strategy and special projects. Now he wants to take the college private. Photo courtesy of Nathan Allen
Nathan Allen is a New College alum who was a vice president special projects under the Corcoran administration in 2023 and 24. He is working on a proposal to gradually take New College private —sort-of going back to the private origins of the college when it started in the 1960s.
In an email to WSLR News, Allen made his case.
“I think the primary conclusion is that a small liberal arts college doesn’t belong in the state university system. Its financial problems are, in part, caused by attempting to align with state university system and Board of Governor objectives, which it never will be able to…hence its last-place average in the metrics.”
Nathan Allen points at recent indicators that show sagging academic performance, to underline the urgency to take the college private.
Tarron Khemraj has been teaching economics at New College for 18 years. He told WSLR News the campus is simply too small to make financial sense as a standalone public college.
Tarron Khemraj
Tarron Khemraj: Surprise, surprise: New College has the highest unit cost per degree. As a small school—as the smallest school—you’re going to have the highest average cost to produce a degree. We want to go up to 1,500 students—or, at least, that’s the talk—and evin if we go to 1,500 students, we would not achieve the economies of scale to bring down the unit cost. It’s just simple economics. We’re always told, “Oh, you guys don’t know how to run a business.” Conservative politicians are always hating on professors. “You don’t know how to run a business. You don’t know how to make a payroll.” Well, I’ll say you don’t know Economics 101 or Business 101, and that involves economies of scale, which is a fundamental idea for any business!
JW: He believes the metrics have been unfair to New College.
TK: The introduction of the metrics in 2017 has been a disaster. If you look at our enrollment, it really declined after the metrics were introduced. Here is a school that is getting the highest per capita Fulbright awards; it’s achieving all these well known, prestigious awards for students; and it was a top ten feeder to PhD and graduate programs in the United States—top ten!—after 2020. At the time, the metrics did not consider any of this.
Ben Watkins, presenting the results of the eight-month audit. He will be visiting each of the audited universities, including New College.
JW: But his idea to save New College is different from Allen’s: Rather than privatize, New College should move back under the administrative umbrella of a large state university. After facing bankruptcy in the 1970s, the college was taken over by the University of South Florida, and it wasn’t until 2001—due to the unrequested initiative of a state lawmaker—that New College became a standalone campus within the state university system.
TK: We should keep in mind the original sin and that this goes back to 2000. New College was once a small school within a big university. If you make a school like New College independent, we have to replicate that entire bureaucracy. I am shocked that the people leading that movement at the time to make this school independent did not consider that we would have to replicate an entire administration.
JW: Khemraj believes that for New College to have a future, politicians must stay out.
TK: It’s extremely frustrating. People don’t really understand what we do. There is always a politician who is trying to build a career on our backs, it seems like, in Florida, whether it was making us independent in 2000 or now making us the center of the national culture wars. There’s always somebody grifting off of our backs, and it really needs to stop.
JW: Reporting for WSLR News, this is Johannes Werner.
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