New College of Florida to acquire USF Sarasota-Manatee in deal that leading Democratic lawmaker says ‘reeks of grift’
A liberal arts college seized by Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, and transformed into a model for conservative higher education is to triple in size after state Republicans engineered a hostile takeover of a rival university’s campus.
New College of Florida, which is controlled by DeSantis’s hand-picked board of trustees, will acquire the Sarasota-Manatee campus of the University of South Florida (USF) next month in a deal described by a leading Florida Democrat as “a grift”.
The transfer of the 32-acre, 2,000-student facility, which has a new six-story residential hall and $44m student center, will significantly expand the footprint of the 900-student New College that the governor has touted as a blueprint for his “anti-woke” agenda.
The transfer will proceed despite almost universal opposition from USF students and faculty, education leaders, and the local business community, who say popular, thriving programs including nursing, tourism and hospitality, will end.
America is going to have to purge its ruling class if it’s going to recover from these years. So many institutions are getting deeply corrupted and the culture of markets without limits has to have significant limits placed on it.
Grifters and conmen are criminals not people to be enabled and raised up.
This was a terrible seizure of the college to begin with (in case it being Desantis and Florida wasn’t enough of an indication).
They basically came in, fired a bunch of professors and canceled classes mid-program, shafted students who wanted to and had been attending, opened a ton of sports scholarship opportunities (despite the college not really having competitive teams), and restructured the senior dorms for the jocks just coming in. One student was told to just change their major after all their professors were fired.
So “anti-woke” takeover really meant cutting STEM programs and (as one official put it) increasing the testosterone levels on campus.
If you ever need to see a doctor you better hope they studied in a blue state (or Cuba).
The dude is a frustrated hitler too, the amount of corruption he is performing in Florida is insane. He might be competing with trump on how to be the worst hitler and evil person in power.
He expedited my exit from Florida. I don’t understand how the citizens couldn’t find anyone better than him to “serve.”
Well he just got rid of the state insurance right as global warming is going to devastate the state. You got out at a good time, it’s going to be hard to sell your home when people realize how that’s going to effect them.
How dare the leopards eat MY face!?
They brought in like 70 baseball players on sports scholarships and they don’t even have a baseball field. There’s something like 12 catchers.
I hope the students sue the daylight out of him
the cons of living in florida vastly outweigh the pros. it’s a miserable shithole state full of elderly rich republicans and mosquitoes. i don’t know if there’s any amount of money you could pay me to live there again. if you’re loaded enough to blow a few grand to take your kids to disney, go ahead, but you’ll be happy to gtfo afterwards
I lived in Florida longer than anywhere else. There are no pros.
I live in Canada and still meet older Canadians whose goal is to retire to Florida, even after all we’ve seen from THE USA in the last decade. I don’t understand these people.
It’s warm most of the year, and that about sums it up.
My cousin and her husband have a winter home in Florida. They were considering selling it until COVID. The pandemic forced them into social isolation and they realized that Florida is bearable if you don’t interact with any of the people there. Just walk on the beach and have your groceries delivered.
A friend of mine lived all over the country between work and the military. He says Floridians are the dumbest people that don’t know they’re dumb (opposed to other States where they’re fully aware of how little they know).
and the further south you go, the worse people drive. by the time you get to miami, it’s almost like lanes don’t even exist
i mean it’s not alabama or mississippi?
but yea. truly a vile cesspool armpit of a state that has nothing to offer that can’t be gotten in a not-shithole state
i mean it’s not alabama or mississippi?
Hey, show some respect for Louisiana in your pantheon of shithole states.
I would pay the kind of money that people pay to go to Disney to not have to go to Disney.
i got the poor people’s package a long time ago and as someone who loves my beer, i didn’t buy a single drop at epcot because it was like $10 for 8oz–and that was well over 15 years ago
I went to a Phillies game last week and paid $20 for a beer. At least it was a 24 oz. can and at least it was so fucking cold there was ice inside it, but still.
One of the first things the Nazis did was go after educators professors and colleges…
A bit more about New College of Florida and all the bullshit they’ve already had to deal with
Isn’t this the school that now has 100++ baseball players but doesn’t have a baseball team?
This will lead to even more brain drain from Florida. Good luck with your absolutely fucked economy, asshats.
Really sounds like this should result in a massive class action lawsuit, but I wont hold my breath.
Used to live there and went to USF-SM. This bullshit is the reason I left years ago. I saw the writing on the walls.
So, is this where people can go to be taught that the Earth is a 5,000 year old flat disk, and that Adam, the first human, rode around on dinosaurs (like Jesus intended!)?
Fuck Desantis. He should be hung for what he did to New College.
Hopefully future employers will simply circular file any resumes with this school on them.
This makes me think of Revenge of the Nerds.
