The following is an open letter to Inspector General Julia Leftheris, with a copy to the Florida Board of Governors via Chair Alan Levine and the New College Board of Trustees via Chair Ron Christaldi.
Dear Inspector General Leftheris,
In follow-up to my many complaints and reports since 2023, I wanted to bring my latest op-ed to your attention in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune: “New College isn’t America First when spending our money.” It is included by reference.
In FY 24-25 and FY 25-26 the administration of New College directed $4.8 million in taxpayer money to scholarships for non-resident international students.
Having offered taxpayer money and student visas to non-resident student-athletes in Brazil, Colombia, Europe, Africa, even Australia, Richard Corcoran then asked for millions more in taxpayer money — approved by the BOG in the 2024 Business Plan — to subsidize hotels to house them. Claiming this is the will of Florida voters.
Thanks to the BOG-mandated syllabus publication, we see the kinds of classes New College is offering its international students: the new “English for Academic Purposes: Business and Finance.” Specifically Business and Finance. New College now also offers Intro to Accounting and Portfolio Management — respectable college subjects, but it shows these international student-athletes aren’t prepared and they haven’t come to Florida to study the liberal arts.
Are there not 100 native Floridians who would benefit from $20,000 scholarships and whose families’ taxes are paying for it with pennies added to every dollar on their grocery bills?
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This is disloyalty: Claiming the will of the voters to restore ‘classical liberal arts’ and then giving $4.8 million in Florida taxpayer money for scholarships to international students who need remedial English to take business and accounting classes — in order to mislead the legislature into allocating even more money — is disloyalty. The people who did it are responsible, and now that it’s public, anyone who acts to keep this information from the public is complicit in this disloyalty to the state and people of Florida.
This charade has now led to the liquidation of USF Sarasota/Manatee. Corcoran converted the main New College academic building into his exclusive office-and-entertainment space, turning classrooms into a lounge and building a dedicated podcast studio.
Now, under the guise of needing space for classrooms, the USF Bull statue has been hauled away, its empty pedestal still adorned with the plaques of past donors. More tax dollars will be spent to dismantle it, or maybe just to pry off the plaques.
Florida students aren’t enrolling in New College for reasons having nothing to do with the goals of January 2023. Florida students don’t want this because Richard Corcoran didn’t deliver the things he claimed he would — or that he claimed he already had. It is failed execution.
Adding, I long believed and have said that the goals of January 2023 weren’t a mortal threat to New College because the caricature of New College was so superficial and off-the-mark — the cure would be simple because the patient wasn’t as sick as the doctor had been told.
The sheer numbers of international student-athletes also harms the student-athletes from Florida, specifically the oversized rosters that deprive them of the opportunity to play they were promised, the lack of qualified athletic personnel and facilities, the constant fear of retaliation.
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The Inspector General system has failed. It has failed spectacularly. It has failed specifically for the BOG, empowered in subsection 20.155(5), Florida Statutes:
(5) OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL.—An Office of Inspector General shall be organized using existing resources and funds to promote accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness and to detect fraud and abuse within state universities.
This is what the legislature expects. This is what the public expects. I learned recently that in 2023 the Inspector General subsection 20.155, “Board of Governors of the State University System,” was modified specifically to give the BOG Inspector General subpoena power.
There is no level of functional or administrative control that allows for subverting the law and handing $4.8 million, at least, in scholarships to international students who need remedial classes, then millions more to house them and illegally subsidize their athletic program, so the president can cite the topline enrollment while lying about his success.
No one should have to beat plowshares into swords to fight tooth-and-nail through the governance and electoral system to try to get the systems of accountability to work properly, systems past leaders built, since secretly subverted.
I don’t know the full story, and make no moral judgment — but that doesn’t change what’s happened to New College, or to USF.
Mike Sanderson
USF Sarasota-Manatee
Sacrificed for the illusion of success.
