Governor Ron DeSantis grabbed control of Florida’s only progressive public college—New College—and installed the hard-right former State Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran as its president. The DeSantis-controlled board of trustees voted to award Corcoran nearly $1 million in annual compensation, then struggled to find the money to pay for it. Students and faculty have protested the takeover, but they have been ignored. Corcoran intends to turn New College into the Hillsdale of Florida (Hillsdale being an evangelical Christian college in Michigan beloved by rightwingers).
New College of Florida has finally found a way to pay Richard Corcoran, who took over as interim president after the school’s board of trustees fired his predecessor in January.
At a Friday meeting of the New College Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the school financially, vice chairperson Dan Stults explained that the school will exploit a loophole in state law that allows them to use mostly public funds to cover Corcoran’s expenses until June 30, when the 2022 fiscal year ends.
For now, that takes the pressure off the foundation to come up with additional funds to cover the president’s salary. The board has not arrived at a plan to cover Corcoran’s nearly $1 million annual compensation package.
Corcoran, a former state education commissioner, receives a base salary of $699,000 — more than double that of his predecessor Patricia Okker and making him the third-highest-paid president among Florida’s public universities, not including bonuses and other stipends.
Under Florida law, only $200,000 of a university president’s salary can come from state funds. The rest typically comes from private donors through the school’s foundation.
However, state law does not restrict how the $200,000 state-funded portion must be allocated throughout the year. That allows New College to use the entire amount to cover most of Corcoran’s compensation until the end of the fiscal year.
Corcoran’s compensation from February through June totals approximately $265,000, Stults said.
That leaves just $65,000 to be covered by the foundation, which will come from a pool of funding that is not already earmarked for certain scholarships or other uses.
When the board of trustees approved Corcoran’s contract in February, board chairperson Debra Jenks said that the foundation has the money to cover Corcoran’s compensation, but did not identify where the additional funds would come from.
Future funding of the foundation has come into question, as many current New College donors have signaled their intention to withhold more than $29 million in future donations after Gov. Ron DeSantis began transforming the school’s leadership, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported.
Open the link to read about the donors who are withholding funds, and the effort by other colleges to recruit students from New College.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Paywall.
New College is Round Up Ron’s new target. He will have to send any of the remaining post-purge staff members to his new Round Up Ron Reeducation Camp where they can learn how to implement the new prescribed, free state approved curriculum. Like most right wing extremists, Ron hasn’t figured out how to pay for the consequences of his actions.
Generally speaking there are no large pools of money lying around and doing nothing at a college or university foundation. They will have to cut something or find new sources of revenue to pay the new president’s salary.
Maybe Betsy DeVos will pay Corcoran’s bloated salary.
Certainly a donor could endow a fund to pay the president’s salary. If folks are interested, here is a survey of public university president’s salaries: https://www.chronicle.com/article/president-pay-public-colleges/
Since I’m not a subscriber, I can’t read the salaries. I know many university presidents are paid more than $1 million. Typically, they oversee campuses with many thousands of students; some oversee multiple campuses. But the New College campus has only 700 students, and the previous president made in the range of $500,000.
This college president was previously rejected in the search for president of the University of Florida because of his lack of qualifications.
Ah, we can use what would have been scholarship money to pay the Governor’s toady a ridiculously exorbitant salary. Nice gig if you can get it.
Flor-uh-duh, where responsibility to taxpayers goes to die.
I can’t believe I haven’t heard/read any prominent people or articles with commentary about this New College ordeal highlight the fact that they fired a woman, replaced her with a man, and doubled the salary. People have talked about the outrageous salary compared to UF/FSU/UCF/USF who have thousands of more students, but not highlighting the gender issue. Their names and photos should be at the top of the “gender pay gap” Wikipedia page.
If you mentioned this Diane, please accept my apology. 🙂
FL,
So much was outrageous about the hostile takeover of New College that I neglected to mention that a female college president was replaced by a questionably qualified male, and his salary was doubled.