Perhaps you recall that Florida has its own mini Department of Government Efficiency, because Gov. Ron DeSantis is the most juiceless man alive—so maladapted to actual governance that he does nothing but ape President Donald Trump’s dumbest ideas.
That fun-sized DOGE has been digging into the efficiency of the state university system. Finally, we can find out how all of those pointy-headed Marxist professors are wasting taxpayer money.
A sign for the New College of Florida
And hey, the baby DOGE and DeSantis turned out to be right! There is a hugely inefficient state school that’s lighting taxpayer money on fire. Glad we caught it.
Oh, wait. Is it too late to delete that report?
It turns out that the school hoovering up the most taxpayer money—and, honestly, with nothing to show for it—is none other than New College.
That’s the school that was once a shining star of Florida’s university system, hobbled by a fatal flaw of not being conservative enough. So DeSantis basically took it over, shoving out people with actual experience and installing anti-woke crusader Christopher Rufo and his fellow travelers in their stead.
Despite having shed all sorts of woke baggage like qualified faculty, library books, and gender studies, New College somehow costs the state much more. Much, much more. In the 2020-2021 school year, New College’s total spending was $53 million. Now? $93 million.
Hmm. Did they keep any math people on at New College? Because some back-of-the-envelope math shows that’s a 75% jump. Similarly, the college’s costs per student sit at $83,000—or four times the university system average.
But surely this money is getting great results, right?
Wrong. The graduation rate at New College stands at a triumphant 19%, which is the second worst in the state.
President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
Apparently, this cut-rate DOGE was supposed to be a huge success because it found $33 million in DEI wokeness to cut from the Florida state university system. They did that, but it still wasn’t enough to cover just one year of expenses at New College alone.
DeSantis is trying his hardest to grift as well as Trump, but these are rookie numbers. He did try a shady little deal to give one of the sweetest undeveloped chunks of Miami to Trump for his alleged presidential library, but that’s just grifting for Trump, not like Trump. And showering Trump with money is, presumably, just a job requirement for the right anyway.
To be fair, DeSantis did succeed in having his wife run a charity that was not really much of a charity, funneling millions of dollars from a Medicaid fraud settlement into some DeSantis-affiliated PACs to fight a ballot initiative to legalize recreational cannabis.
Much like the federal government, none of these efforts is about saving money—because they don’t save money. It’s about taking money away from people DeSantis doesn’t like and giving it to people he does.