Talk:New College of Florida

affluent

The footnote to 'affluent' gives a description/definition that is at odds with the description/definition in the blue link to the word. I think a different word should be used. (As a side note, at this school do all low-income students really get Pell grants?) Kdammers (talk) 20:27, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

AltNewCollege rebrand

In response to the cease and desist, AltNewCollege rebranded as AltLiberalArts. I think a sentence should be added to that part of the article clarifying this. 2600:6C65:623F:B14C:9C0B:907:88B1:37F (talk) 23:49, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

"Conservative" liberal arts

I'm not sure the college should be described in the first sentence as "conservative." For one thing, it's a public institution (unlike Hillsdale, referenced in the edit); for another, the new trustees have only been in office for 12 months; and most importantly, in their public statements, they at least say that "all ideologies are welcome" and they want the school to, in effect, teach the controversies with lots of open debates. See, for example, the descriptions of "the Socratic Stage Dialogue Series": https://www.ncf.edu/news/new-college-to-host-first-event-in-socratic-stage-dialogue-series-november-30-featuring-jason-greenblatt-and-ghaith-al-omari/ . Now, it seems pretty obvious that what they're attempting to do is make a school perceived as leftist (though I'd dispute that characterization, really) into a school that's on the right wing. But it really seems like in official pronouncements, at least, what they're saying is "we're making it less left and more middle." And in reality, they're trying a lot of things, but it's still way too early to see if a campus political culture can actually be successfully altered in this way. So I'm suggesting removing the descriptor from the first sentence. Objections? --grant (talk) 06:32, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

To justify such a label in the lede sentence, we need some very strong and pervasive sourcing asserting that the character of the college has been changed by the new trustees. It's far too soon to make such a judgment and the source that was cited to justify this addition explicitly discussed the trustee's plans to remake the college, not their success in doing so (against the wishes and protests of students, alumni, and faculty). ElKevbo (talk) 12:37, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi there! I was the original editor for this particular edit and a New College alumni who attended during the takeovers and I can personal ascertain that the college's character has dramatically changed in some very extreme ways, with aggressive recruitment of conservative students being a key part of their strategy. Additionally the college has been actively hostile towards queer students. I feel that the moniker is accurate given my lived experience at the institution, at least for the time being, I am happy to be corrected by someone else of more recent epistemological understanding of what it is like to attend New College. I also feel that by not naming what has happened to the college for what it is, there is a risk of normalizing the behavior at the college. Wildflower42 (talk) 04:43, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable sources, not editors' personal opinions and experiences. ElKevbo (talk) 06:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Just thought I'd add this here because I see some back-and-forth in the edit history: It's unclear whether the school is really "conservative" per se, but it seems quite clear that the new slate of six trustees are. Mark Bauerlein, for instance, might have described himself as "libertarian" a few years ago, but he has an email address at *The American Conservative*, contributed to *Literature and the Conservative Ideal*, and is an editor and podcast host at *First Things*, with shows covering "Freedom and Conservatism" among other topics. I wasn't involved in any edits, but I thought I'd put a couple links here for future reference. -grant (talk) 22:19, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Principles

I created a Principles sub-section of Academics and moved the Principles to the top of the section, and cited the 2016 Master Plan. I will look for additional sources. Dihagan (talk) 00:06, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

There are a few sources from early documents, but be aware that the number varies. John Gustad himself sometimes listed eight, or seven, or six "basic assumptions." All the iterations do include the four that were eventually settled on in later decades. There's one iteration of Gustad's principles here, from five months before the school opened its doors: https://pragmatos.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/1964-04-Gustad%E2%80%94New-College%E2%80%94D-Minus-Five-Months.pdf

It's also probably worth noting that from the outset, the distinguishing feature of the school was meant to be an emphasis on tutorials and independent study projects. --grant (talk) 06:08, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

It seems that for an "experimental" school, the founding principles as written out by John Gustad, the first dean and warden, are notable and significant - they define what the school was set up to do: to create an institution where students can, to an unusually large degree, determine the course of their own education. I'm not sure exactly why those principles were removed (it looks like the edit explanation said, "sounds like a mission statement"). Any objection to me re-inserting those principles with a little bit more context as to why they matter in an encyclopedia entry? --grant (talk) 04:29, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

Bifurcate into two pages?

The entire institution, including the logo, is totally different following a hostile takeover designed to dismantle and completely remake the prior college (the only deliberate continuity is citing rankings, which will soon plummet). I propose that should be one page for the pre-2023 institution, and another for the current one. They can make reference to one another, much as the Seattle Supersonics page makes reference to that of the Oklahoma City Thunder. ~2025-34900-81 (talk) 19:35, 19 November 2025 (UTC)