Florida college seized by DeSantis in ‘anti-woke’ push to triple in size

A liberal arts college seized by Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, and transformed into a model for conservative higher education is to triple in size after state Republicans engineered a hostile takeover of a rival university’s campus. New College of Florida, which is controlled by DeSantis’s hand-picked board of trustees, will acquire the Sarasota-Manatee campus of the University of South Florida (USF) next month in a deal described by a leading Florida Democrat as “a grift”. The transfer of the 32-acre, 2,000-student facility, which has a new six-story residential hall and $44m student center, will significantly expand the footprint of the 900-student New College that the governor has touted as a blueprint for his “anti-woke” agenda. The transfer will proceed despite almost universal opposition from USF students and faculty, education leaders, and the local business community , who say popular, thriving programs including nursing, tourism and hospitality, will end. “It’s such a bad thing because USF Sarasota-Manatee was serving a different group of students than New College and had very different programs,” said Lucie Lapovsky , a higher education consultant and one of dozens of signatories on a letter to state lawmakers last month condemning the proposal. “Sarasota is a big tourist area right on the water on the Gulf of Mexico. We have lots of hotels and restaurants that employ graduates of that program. …