A merger would hurt New College’s ‘academic purpose’ | Letter to the editor
State Rep. Randy Fine is an earnest legislator concerned with the best possible use of Florida revenues allocated for higher education. His analysis for producing a single degree needs to clarified.
The state of Florida allocates funding on the basis of Full Time Equivalency, a more definitive means of measuring enrollments. The press information suggests a possible commingling of head count and FTE numbers.
New College and Florida Polytechnic are very different. New College has a six-decades-old alumni base, a well-developed administrative structure and national recognition as a pre-eminent public college. Florida Polytechnic has a tiny alumni base, extensive reliance on administrative services provided by the University of Florida and limited national recognition.
The proposed merger has increased New College’s degree unit cost as prospective students choose other colleges with secure academic futures. Further, current New College students will do the same when invited by other well-regarded institutions. That’s the economic reality in the tough environment of college admissions.
I fully appreciated the uniqueness of New College’s academic environment during eight years as chief academic officer of neighboring USF Sarasota-Manatee. The New College faculty and staff are very special people. In decades of domestic and international experience I have never encountered another group of scholars so dedicated to the learning principles of an institution, a devotion animating each lecture, laboratory and tutorial.
If New College is merged into the academic and non-academic interests of Florida State University, its integrity of academic purpose will dissipate amid competing economic politics of a big institution and this “Faberge egg” of undergraduate learning in Florida will be a memory.
Currently, New College seeks to right-size itself. With aggressive fund raising, focused recruitment and tightened expenditure patterns that is possible and Florida will maintain a unique center of academic excellence.
Peter French
Lakewood Ranch