Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday said that the effort to strip left-wing ideology at Florida’s smallest state university could be a model for higher education reform nationwide.
In an interview with conservative talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt, the Florida Republican discussed the overhaul of New College, a 700-student school in Sarasota.
DeSantis began to transform the school earlier this year, as the Tampa Free Press reported, by appointing six new conservative trustees, including journalist Christopher Rufo, a leader in exposing liberal “diversity, equity, and inclusion” schemes. More recently, the school this week named as its new president Richard Corcoran, a strong conservative who led the state Education Department under DeSantis.
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DeSantis told Hewitt that, if he’s elected president, he will ignite a reform of higher education by focusing on the agencies that accredit colleges and universities.
“We’re going to totally blow up the accreditation cartel,” DeSantis said, according to a transcript of the interview.
“Right now, part of the reason universities operate as they are is because they need to get accredited. And these accreditors are all trying to create the types of universities that we object to as conservatives. So we’re going to have alternative accreditors.”
The governor said that, for example, instead of being forced to have a gender studies or DEI program to get accredited, these alternative accreditors will promise not to accredit schools with left-wing, ideologically driven programs and majors.
“That is going to create, I think, an opportunity for a lot of innovation in higher ed,” said DeSantis.
At New College of Florida, in addition to hiring a conservative president, “they got rid of things like CRT [Critical Race Theory]. They abolished the Gender Studies Department. They rebranded the university as being the best classical publicly-funded liberal arts college.”
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“The number of parents across this country who are interested in applying is unbelievable. And they were struggling to get applications.”
DeSantis then reiterated his plan.
“So we’re going to use the accreditation. I think that’s going to be a good thing, and I do think you’re going to see a lot of changes in higher ed.”
DeSantis added that the massive student loan debt that President Joe Biden wants to make taxpayers pay would become an issue for the schools themselves.
“We’re going to make the universities responsible for the loans. That’s going to cause them to change their behavior, because they’re not going to be able to go on ideological joyrides with their curriculum knowing that if somebody gets out of the university and they can’t afford to get by, that the university may end up being on the hook,” DeSantis told Hewitt. “So you’re going to see much more focus in terms of the subjects that are going to be offered because of those incentives.”
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