It seems fitting that New College occupies the former estate of the circus magnate Charles Ringling: Nothing about this waterfront campus is ordinary.
The 647 undergraduates here receive written evaluations instead of grades. They sign academic contracts rather than earn credit hours. And roughly three out of four are vegetarians.
For 25 years, eccentric students seeking a small, private-college education at a public-college price have embraced New College’s funky culture.
But first they have had to find it. New College has long toiled in the shadow of the University of South Florida, some 60 miles to the north, in Tampa. The university took control in 1975, after the state saved the struggling private college from bankruptcy.
Next week, New College will become independent again, this time as a public institution -- Florida’s 11th and newest state university. As the campus prepares for what many here describe as the “divorce” from the University of South Florida, a question weighs heavily on their minds: Will New College remain small and unique, or will it become more like the other large, research-oriented public universities in this state?
|
|
|
|
| State appropriation per undergraduate, 2001-2 |
| 1.
| Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers
| $8,945
| 2.
| Florida A&M University, Tallahassee
| $8,118
| 3.
| Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
| $7,350
| 4.
| Florida State University, Tallahassee
| $7,218
| 5.
| University of North Florida, Jacksonville
| $7,197
| 6.
| University of Florida, Gainesville
| $7,044
| 7.
| University of Central Florida, Orlando
| $6,982
| 8.
| University of South Florida, Tampa
| $6,803
| 9.
| University of West Florida, Pensacola
| $6,652
| 10.
| Florida International University, Miami
| $6,532
| SOURCES: Florida Board of Regents,
University of South Florida |
|
“The spirit and creativity is what made us what we are,” says Sandra Gilchrist, a biology professor here for 18 years. “To ask us to change -- that goes against what brought us here.”
New College has been a small division on the Sarasota campus of U.S.F., buried in the vast budget of a research university. Now, it will be fully exposed to the political interference and belt-tightening of legislators at the state capitol in Tallahassee, where Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly 2 to 1.
That could mean trouble. New College is well known as the most-liberal public campus in the state. The Green Party is very popular here, as are Amnesty International and Students for a Free Tibet. The college has a club for Democrats, but lacks one for Republicans. Many students shun caps and gowns at commencement, and a few have worn almost nothing at all.
The campus’s far-left reputation is not the only problem; it is also very expensive to operate. Florida pays about $15,000 per student per year to subsidize the college’s cozy 11-to-1 student-to-faculty ratio. That’s nearly twice what it costs to educate undergraduates at most other public universities in the state.
“What we do is incredibly inefficient from a business point of view,” says Patrick McDonald, an associate professor of mathematics. “But it’s the only way we get the product we have.”
Adds Glenn R. Cuomo, a professor of German language and literature: “I can only wonder how we will look to a conservative Legislature.”
Although most faculty members and students supported the separation from the University of South Florida, few here clamored for the change. The drive for independence was actually begun by two local lawmakers who felt that the research aspirations of the University of South Florida hampered New College’s focus on undergraduates and the liberal arts.
The idea was greeted with much skepticism by politicians in Tallahassee, including Gov. Jeb Bush, who publicly questioned whether New College was too small to justify its own set of administrative offices. The Republican governor signed off on the change because it was part of a broader bill that included one of his key legislative priorities -- a major overhaul of education in the state. But he vetoed a $1.2-million earmark that the Legislature had awarded to help New College with its transition.
“The bottom line,” says John L. Winn, Mr. Bush’s education-policy coordinator, “is that he would have preferred that there be more of an opportunity for a full analysis of the impact of independence.”
Mr. Bush and other policy makers wonder whether Florida needs or can afford a small, public liberal-arts college (about 70 percent of the students here are Florida residents). The state’s already crowded public campuses expect 24,000 more in-state undergraduates over the next decade, a 20-percent increase. On top of that, public colleges in most states are under orders from lawmakers to align their academic programs to the economic needs of their region, says Dennis Jones, president of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, a consulting firm.
“The pressure from the Legislature will come in numbers of students and cost,” Mr. Jones says of New College. “In the overall scheme of things, they’ll be disadvantaged in the political wars because they have a small constituency.”
Michael S. Bassis, who as dean of New College currently holds the the campus’s top job, insists that concerns about political pressure to either enroll more students or cut costs are “untested hypotheses.” He points out that the bill that made New College independent promises to preserve its unusual mission. In the end, he adds, the $9.2-million that Florida spent to operate New College in 2000-1 is a “small investment” in a state higher-education budget of some $2.7-billion.
“There are a lot of expensive programs in the state-university system,” Mr. Bassis says. “The problem is that they are balanced by some very inexpensive programs on the same campus. We just don’t have that balance here.”
Nearly everyone here agrees that as an independent institution, New College will require much more state and private funds than it has until now. But exactly how much the college will need is still unclear, because the measure making it independent was just approved by the Legislature in May. New College officials are working with the governor’s office to restore some, and perhaps all, of the $1.2-million in additional funds he recently rejected. For now, New College will temporarily share accreditation -- along with services such as computer labs and the campus police -- with the University of South Florida’s Sarasota campus.
But during its first liberated year, New College will need to build an administration, adding at least seven positions. It has no president, no academic deans, and no lobbyist. It lacks an office to process financial-aid applications, and to collect and analyze basic facts about the institution and students. (Unlike Florida’s other universities, New College won’t try to play big-time sports, or any intercollegiate sports at all.) Its development efforts have been led by a retired Army lieutenant general, Rolland V. Heiser, who has mainly hit up local philanthropists. The college, which has a $30-million endowment, raised $1.6-million in 2000-1.
“The time has come for alumni to be more active in fund raising,” says Mr. Heiser, who heads the New College Foundation. “I see no reason why we can’t have a $100-million endowment.”
A bigger endowment would help the college repair its infrastructure. “The facilities on that campus are in the physically worst shape of any in the state,” says State Sen. Donald C. Sullivan, a Republican. Some faculty offices are housed in a former Howard Johnson’s on the campus’s edge, and a residence hall has been turned into classroom space. A few administrative offices in Charles Ringling’s former home are in the pantry and kitchen, where desks share space with a six-burner stove and a double sink.
Many New College professors blame the University of South Florida for the disrepair, charging that it has neglected its satellite campus of 1,300 students here, and New College in particular, except when the university had something to gain. “We provided them bragging rights,” says David Brain, an associate professor of sociology.
The New College faculty twice voted not to support a bid by U.S.F. for a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. “Many of us found the whole thing rather insulting,” Mr. Brain adds. “They never counted us as part of the U.S.F. faculty when it came to things like salaries, but wanted to use us to get a Phi Beta Kappa chapter.” U.S.F. still has no chapter of the honors society.
Mr. Brain and other professors here also say that U.S.F. has tried to pluck prospective New College students for its own honors program, established in 1983. This year, the university even went as far as to call some students who were interested in New College, and to make them scholarship offers.
For its part, U.S.F. never wanted to let go of New College. But officials at U.S.F. deny that they intentionally recruited prospective New College students, blaming the few occasions when it did happen on “clerical errors.” Even without the academically strong students that New College enrolled, the university’s academic profile will remain largely the same, because New College students made up only about 5 percent of a typical freshman class. In 2000, for instance, the average SAT score for the freshman class at U.S.F. was 1084; without the New College students, it would have been 1072.
“We wish them a lot of success,” says U.S.F.'s president, Judy Genshaft. “Will they be able to do it? We’ll see. Time will tell. I hope for their sake that they make it because it’s a very unique college.”
Professors at New College lavish praise on their students. Because a grade is not riding on every assignment, students are eager to be challenged and enjoy learning for its own sake, faculty members say. But the lack of grades and credits, students say, makes the choice to come here a difficult one to explain to their families and friends, who question the rigor of an institution only five miles from the beach in sunny Florida.
About 60 percent of the 550 students who applied for admission to last year’s entering class were accepted, and about two out of three of them enrolled. The average high-school grade-point average in the entering class was 3.9, and the average SAT score was 1308.
An independent New College will probably be more visible to prospective students and, as a result, increase the college’s reach across the country, a goal of many here. Admissions counselors will no longer have to explain the convoluted relationship with U.S.F. at college fairs, and the institution will have its own Web site. Perhaps most important, according to professors and administrators, the college will have a separate mention in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings.
“Outside of a certain set of people, no one knows about New College,” says Molly Robinson, who transferred here from Yale University and is spending this summer working on her senior thesis, a requirement for every New College student. “Independence will let people know we exist.”
Even without pressure from the Legislature, New College officials expect to make room for a few more students, so a larger variety of courses and majors can be offered. Several years ago, professors agreed that 800 students and 80 faculty members -- up from 58 today -- would be an ideal size. Mr. Bassis, the dean, says that if the state provided more dollars for facilities and faculty members, and the Sarasota campus of U.S.F. moved elsewhere in the city as planned, New College “would think very seriously” about expanding even further.
Several professors foresee a future enrollment of about 1,000 students, similar to that of some prestigious liberal-arts colleges elsewhere. Whether lawmakers will pay for the extra faculty members that plan would require is unclear.
“There is a place in the state of Florida for a public honors college, but they will have to compete with the other institutions to get the resources they will need,” says Senator Sullivan, one of the sponsors of the measure to make New College independent. “How well they get funded will be determined by how well they educate the Legislature about what they are and what they want to be.”
Mr. Bassis says that it will be up to alumni and other supporters of New College to make the case to the Legislature that the institution is worth the price. “This place,” he says, “will be one way for Florida to change the perception that it cares more about its athletic teams than its academic programs.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Page: A20
