The Difficult Work of Academic Reform

New College of Florida enters its second year under new leadership.

A small public university on the coast of Sarasota, New College of Florida spent decades languishing as a left-wing activist haven. Its enrollment, test scores, and other measures steadily fell. Legislators in Tallahassee considered closing it.

Then suddenly, the school was in the news. In January 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis appointed a slate of new trustees, including me, to the New College board and tasked us with transforming the institution into a “classical liberal arts university.”

The media covered the event in dramatic style, with more than 1,000 stories targeting the college and its new leadership. We had drawn attention, but what was our plan for reform?

“Soldiers win battles,” an old military adage holds, “but logistics wins wars.” The same is true in universities. Political leaders can replace a board of trustees, select a new president, and unveil a vision for change. But the fate of any such project lies in the detailed work of administration: the thousands of small decisions that affect the culture of the university.

This is where we are now with New College. In the first year, we engineered our revolution: deposing the existing leadership, abolishing the DEI department, terminating the gender-studies program, and announcing a vision for transforming the institution. Now we are pursuing the hard work of reform. Under the leadership of President Richard Corcoran, we are making progress along three tracks: faculty hiring, curriculum design, and student recruiting.

First, faculty hiring. In year one, we witnessed unprecedented faculty turnover. Approximately 40 percent of existing faculty left the institution through resignation, nonrenewal, and other incentives. The press treated this as a failure— “exodus,” “chaos,” “brain drain,” read the headlines—but each departure created an opening for a better replacement.

This work is imminent. We expect soon to announce the hiring of up to 40 new professors, all sharing a commitment to the classical liberal arts. While we are careful to avoid partisan language, we freely admit that, in practice, this means that the faculty as a whole will shift rightward.

This should be celebrated. We will have the most balanced faculty of any state institution in Florida, with a wider range of opinion than our competitors. And we will have a strong contingent of faculty members who reflect the basic philosophical commitments of the people of Florida, who, it should be noted, generously fund our operation.

Second, as we welcome new faculty, we can begin to design the curriculum for all four years. Last term, President Corcoran announced the basic structure of the new curriculum, balancing the concepts of logos and techne, beginning with a mandatory humanities course on Homer’s Odyssey and continuing with courses in the applied arts, statistics, and data science.

This year, I hope to see the full elaboration of our core curriculum, with courses in the philosophy, history, science, and arts of the West. We hope to recruit a permanent provost with the pedagogical sophistication to design the curriculum and the professional network to recruit the faculty who will teach it.

New College has the opportunity to create a curriculum on par with our private-sector counterparts, such as Hillsdale College, and to demonstrate that public universities don’t have to succumb to left-wing ideological capture. With sufficient political will, they can govern themselves on a different set of principles entirely.

Finally, student recruiting. In the first year, President Corcoran organized a near-miracle. In a matter of months, he recruited the largest incoming class in New College’s history, without the benefit of a full admissions staff or a normal application cycle. He demonstrated to the legislature that, despite the churn, New College was growing.

The next step is to improve student culture and competitiveness. Each year, the number of students who matriculated here under the previous administration declines, while the number of students who entered under the current administration grows. The result is a gradual recomposition of the culture.

We believe that New College can be a destination for Florida families who value the Western tradition and that it will provide continuity for students with private, home-based, and religious high school backgrounds, in addition to those who have graduated from public institutions. Classical education, in particular, is the fastest-growing pedagogical approach in K–12 schools; we hope to earn the trust of those families as they consider their college choice.

In time, we hope that New College develops into the best classical institution of its kind, while also disproving the assumption that public universities must submit to DEI bureaucracies, grievance departments, and other left-wing staples. We want to demonstrate instead that the public—the voters of Florida, who express themselves through their elected representatives—rules public institutions.

Anything less will reflect a serious failure of leadership.

This article was originally published in City Journal