Board of Governors suggests more financial transparency; New College spending questioned again

by Jay Waagmeester, Florida Phoenix
January 30, 2025

Inconsistencies in New College of Florida’s finances arose again during a Board of Governors meeting Thursday, as one board member called for an “eyes-wide-open” approach to taxpayer money used at the small, public, liberal arts college. 

During the meeting in Jacksonville, Board of Governors member Eric Silagy recalled a conversation he had with New College President Richard Corcoran during a September meeting when they disagreed about how much is spent to educate each student at the Sarasota college. 

New College of Florida spending called into question

The two had disagreed about whether New College spent what Silagy argued was $91,000 or what Corcoran argued was $68,000 during the 2023-2024 school year. 

Thursday, Silagy said he and Corcoran now agree that the number was between $88,000 and $91,000. 

“I’ve gone through New College’s budget as proposed by its Board of Trustees and what the Legislature is relying on in order to fund this 24-25 cycle, and that one says it’s $105 million in expenses … which is somewhere between $140,000 a student or $114,000 a student,” Silagy said. 

In reviewing New College’s finances, Silagy said the trustee-approved budget included inconsistent line items including $1.5 million spent on athletics using funds not eligible for sports, “which I presume is not correct because that’s a violation of the Board of Governors rule.”

“We need to know what the real numbers are so we can also provide guidance to the Legislature and fill our constitutional obligation to make sure that the universities are spending money wisely,” Silagy said. 

‘More visibility’ into university finances

Board Vice Chair Alan Levine had opened the finance and audit committee meeting two hours earlier by saying he recently met with finance leaders at each of the 12 public universities. 

“I know as long as I’ve been on this board, we’ve never really actively reviewed things like balance sheets and things like that, and so we’ve discussed putting together a more transparent scorecard of university finances and some of the metrics that we look at in terms of cash management and things like that,” Levine said, advocating for “more visibility into the financial management of the institutions.”

Nearly two hours later, Silagy recalled Levine’s call for increased financial transparency. 

“I’m not sure who you’re referring to,” Silagy said.

Levine said “I meant as a body.”

Silagy, former chair of the budget committee, said he’s looked universities’ financial documents “at length.”

“Doing so has also led me down a lot of rabbit holes and, frankly, frustration because of the inconsistency around a lot of these things,” Silagy said, recalling his fall disagreement with Corcoran. 

He advocated for creating the scorecard Levine mentioned to “have that information at our fingertips and not have the disagreements on what the right numbers are.”

Cost to educate

Silagy compared New College to the University of Central Florida. UCF has a budget of approximately $2.3 billion with an enrollment of about 70,000. New College’s budget for the current year is about $105 million with an enrollment of about 800.

“Who do I work with to make sure that we have these metrics that go through, because it’s the equivalent of UCF getting $6 billion a year on a student basis and I want to make sure that if we decide to do that as a state, it’s eyes-wide-open, and we do it because we really feel it’s a great value to have fourteen times more expensive tuition being charged to taxpayers because it’s not being charged to the students,” Silagy said. 

Silagy said he was not suggesting the state not fund the difference between in-state tuition and the cost to educate each student, but “I sure am suggesting that the state needs to be, we need to also understand, why is it so valuable to have a student, for taxpayers to pay $115,000 a student to go through and get an education at New College versus pay $7,000 a student or $8,000 a student at any one of our other universities.”

The Legislature considered shutting down the small, public college in 2020 under the same argument. That measure would have closed Florida Polytechnic university, too. 

Silagy resigned as CEO of Florida Power & Light in 2023 following allegations the company spied on a journalist and recruited and financed candidates to run against politicians opposing FPL’s interests.

Levine insisted: “Once the Legislature makes a decision, our job is to comply with it and do the best we can with it,” although he acknowledged Silagy had raised questions an “average, rational taxpayer would ask, and I don’t think they’re bad questions.”

During the September meeting, Corcoran said the “scrutiny” of New College “is long overdue,” adding that he didn’t recall people targeting the institution when it was “massively losing money and massively creating the most toxic [atmosphere] arguably in the nation” before he took over as president in 2023. 

After deciding to keep New College open, Gov. Ron DeSantis overhauled its board of trustees and named Corcoran, a former speaker of the Florida House, president. Since, the school has defenestrated its gender studies program and abandoned its old, progressive approach in favor of conservative political values. 

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