Renaissance at New College of Florida
Breaking Free from the Darkness of Gender Ideology
By Stephen Schwager and Eddie Speir
A friend of New College of Florida observed recently, “New College as currently constituted seems less like a liberal arts college and more like a Gender Studies program with a few associated disciplines.”
And the evidence demonstrates clearly that a college organized as such is doomed to failure. Our last article announced our goal of removing Gender Studies from NCF. A reader commented negatively about this plan. When one of these authors responded, he referred to two hard facts about NCF – the college’s dwindling student enrollment and its significant financial distress. The negative commenter chose to ignore these facts and instead launched a series of ad hominem attacks, engaged in name-calling, and made a series of false allegations. This is typical of the Woke American Left. Ignore facts and evidence, and attack those who point out the failures of their programs and endeavors.
During the winter of the 2016 – 2017 academic school year, NCF’s leadership announced a plan to address its shrinking student enrollment. Recognizing that an enrollment of fewer than 900 students threatened the college’s existence, the plan set a goal of increasing enrollment to 1,200 students within four years. This plan was endorsed by the Florida legislature, which had expressed serious concerns about the viability of NCF.
Fast forward to spring 2023. Six years have passed since the grand plan to grow NCF’s student enrollment by approximately 34%. What are the results? Fewer than 700 students are enrolled at NCF today. Rather than growing by 34%, the student population shrunk by nearly 25% from its 2016 - 2017 enrollment. By any measure, this plan, which doubled down on DEI and Woke policies, failed, and NCF was wounded.
However, just as we are committed to growing the student population to the necessary-to-be-sustainable 1,200 students, we are committed to preserving the low, highly personal student: professor ratio that is a hallmark of New College. Faculty hiring will keep pace with student growth, and the low student: professor ratio will be preserved.
We are also committed to preventing situations like the one described by a student who has seriously contemplated leaving New College. Concerned and dismayed that all his classes were filtered through an omnipresent Woke ideological lens, be it a philosophy course or a math seminar, be it the dominance of bringing the curriculum into modern-day relevance by infusing courses with Critical Social Justice, CRT, and Gender/Queer ideology or requiring the ritualistic introduction with pronouns, this student expressed his concerns to one of his professors. The professor’s advice: “You better keep that to yourself, or they will crucify you.”
Multiple students have shared several versions of this scenario. Such a hostile campus culture should be anathema to all educational institutions. Unfortunately, such a culture appears to have been cultivated at NCF, limiting students and faculty to those who fit a narrow, ideological worldview or those willing to keep their heads down and mouths shut.
Let’s be clear: without the proposed changes, the Florida legislature will most likely dissolve New College of Florida. They will be justified in doing so. Florida taxpayers should not be expected to fund a Woke vanity project whose student enrollment is the lowest of any public college in America.
What NCF has been offering is a losing proposition. How do we know? If it had been a winning proposition, student enrollment wouldn’t have shrunk by 25% since 2017. If it were a winning proposition, the college would have met its target of 1,200 students by 2022.
How low must student enrollment go? How bad does the 4-year graduation rate need to be before the Woke naysayers engage in serious self-reflection on their failures?
The changes implemented at NCF offer hope and a bright future for a school that will become one of America’s top colleges. Those who oppose these changes prefer to see the college fail.
New College of Florida is charting a new, exciting course that welcomes students and professors with a diversity of viewpoints, opinions, and passions. NCF is committed to embracing its current students and welcoming many more. The state is committed to significant funding to ensure NCF’s success.
We look forward to initiating a renaissance and elevating New College of Florida into its Golden Era.
Thank you for pointing out that the state legislature intended to shut New College and, without the work of a few alums and the governor, the college would be over at the end of the school year. Most students, parents and graduates are intentionally blind to this cold hard fact and carry on as if the party can continue as is without meeting any criteria for effectiveness laid out by the state.
As for Gender Studies, I agree that as the courses are currently composed leave students with a wholly inadequate education. They appear to be completely taught from a feminist and queer theory perspective even though the overwhelming majority of the world is neither feminist nor queer. It makes no sense. However, as females outperform males in education, already out earn them in major cities and as greater and greater numbers of parents outsource childrearning responsibilities, we are going through major civilizational alterations that deserve examination. I'd rather see New College students get a comprehensive education in Family and Gender Studies as related to psychology, sociology, economics, history, biology and neurology, than the boutique and obscure discipline that currently exists at New College.
I hope that all of the school's courses focus on healthy civilization-building in all of its disciplines. To ignore the massive changes taking place between males and female and within families at this critical time would be an opportunity lost.
Mr. Speir, how do you reconcile what you've said here with the fact that, before the hostile takeover of New College was announced on 1/6, NCF was primed to welcome an incoming class 30% larger than the most previous class? It was only after the board takeover, the firing of Patricia Okker after less than two years in office, etc., that the incoming class dropped to such a level (only 1/3 of the number prior to Jan 6) that Interim President Corcoran now has to offer what is essentially a $10K bribe to potential students. President Okker was never given a chance for her initiatives to bear fruit, and yet you have the audacity to blame some amorphous concept of "Wokeism" for NCF's low attendance? Why not call it what it was: poor leadership from Okker's predecessor and the consistent inability of the school to get any help from Tallahassee? I know you need a boogeyman to point at and feel good about vanquishing, but "Wokeism" is so overused and is such a catch-all now that it's lost all meaning. The school has a lot of issues, true, but those are tangible issues such as deferred maintenance. You instead chose to wage a crusade against a make-believe CRT/DEI/Woke/Gender Studies monster, and to do so, you offer $10K bribes to prospective students and start an athletic program that *checks notes* NOBODY ASKED FOR. And don't think we don't see you trying to funnel your Inspiration Academy kids into NCF; after all, your first mention of NCF baseball saw you flanked by your own ballplayers, not interested NCF students. To be clear, I don't place any blame or vitriol on your baseball players but I do think it's tacky to use them as staging elements for your own ambition. After all, a permanent sports pipeline from IA to NCF increases IA prestige and puts more money in your pocket. Rather a conflict of interest, isn't it? So don't act like you're a bunch of saviors coming to slay the Woke dragon and bring "classical" education to NCF. You're a tool being used by the governor to create a shiny prop for his presidential run, and you stand to profit personally from it. Plain and simple.