A key campus in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ push for a conservative overhaul of the state’s higher-education system would see its physical footprint grow under the House budget.
The Higher Education Budget Subcommittee on Monday advanced a bill that would transfer buildings, facilities, equipment, and about $53 million in debt from the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus to the Sarasota-based New College of Florida.
Rep. Demi Busatta, R-Coral Gables, who chairs the committee, said the move is based on geography.
“Transferring what is now currently the Sarasota-Manatee facilities to the institution that is already headquartered in Sarasota aligns governance with geographic proximity,” Busatta said. “It allows for more direct oversight, strategic planning, and responsiveness to regional needs at New College.”
However, Democrats questioned the move, pointing to an audit last fall from the Florida Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which found New College of Florida offered the lowest value among the state universities in producing alumni with degrees.
“This bill asks us to formalize an expensive gamble, lock in a major long-term debt, potentially through 2052, while New College is operating at a truly DOGE-worthy low,” said Daryl Campbell, D-Fort Lauderdale. “That’s not conservative. That’s not fiscally responsible. That’s how you turn a budget line into a bailout pipeline.”
The DOGE audit, looking at fiscal year 2023-2024 numbers, showed New College at the top of the cost-per-degree chart, at $494,715, followed by $154,213 at Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland and $150,729 at the University of Florida, the state’s flagship university. At $46,548, the University of Central Florida, which has a much larger student population than New College, had the lowest operating expenses to produce a degree.
The transfer, included in DeSantis’ proposed pre-session recommendations made in December, was not part of the Senate’s fiscal year 2025-2026 spending package released Friday.
New College, which covers about 110 acres in Sarasota, is about one mile from USF Sarasota-Manatee, which opened as a satellite campus to the Tampa-based university 50 years ago. The current location and facilities, using about 32 acres, was opened in 2006 and comprises primarily two buildings — a Student Center and a residential hall for about 200 students, and the main academic building, which includes 24 classrooms, a 190-seat lecture hall, a library, and faculty offices.
The House budget bill states that USF students enrolled at the Sarasota-Manatee campus prior to July 1, 2026, would remain associated with the Tampa-based school, with the caveat that they graduate within four years of their initial enrollment.
Prior to the meeting, House Democratic Leader Rep. Fentrice Driskell of Tampa expressed concern about the spending by the state on New College.
“It is constantly surrounded by controversy, but it’s the Governor’s pet political project, so it’s receiving this land from USF, which has been a good school and a good community partner for years,” Driskell said during a conference call with reporters.
“The USF community doesn’t want this,” Driskell added. “This reeks of grift. I hope this does not make it through the budget process and we stop this dead in its tracks.”
DeSantis has for years pushed to make the 66-year-old New College into a classical-style institution modeled in part after Hillsdale College, a private liberal-arts school in Michigan.
The proposal calls for “existing contracts, leases, obligations, responsibilities, and liabilities of the board of trustees of the University of South Florida that are principally associated with the real property encompassing the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus or any facilities constructed upon those parcels, must be transferred to the board of trustees of New College of Florida by July 1, 2026.”
The proposal also would direct New College to make space available to USF Sarasota-Manatee students to complete their degrees.
The proposal drew USF Board of Trustees Chairman Will Weatherford to muse that the university doesn’t “control the outcome.”
At the start of a USF trustees meeting in December, Weatherford called the proposal “a policy matter that's going to be discussed, debated, and worked through over the coming months of the legislative session. We don't control the outcome of that discussion.”
While saying the issue will be determined by state policymakers, he said USF would work to limit potential impacts to faculty members and the more than 2,000 students at the campus.
“I want it to be heard loud and clear that students of USF or our students, and whatever commitments we've made to them, we will fulfill,” said Weatherford, a former state House Speaker. “And faculty and staff who work for the University of South Florida, regardless of what campus they work on, we are going to work with them, protect them, and make sure that there's minimal impacts, if and when they do come.”
News Service Assignment Manager Tom Urban contributed to this report