A five-year, multimillion-dollar effort to expand student enrollment and continue other major changes at New College of Florida was approved Wednesday by the state university system’s Board of Governors, despite some concerns about the spending.
The Board of Governors approved a New College strategic plan, which will allow the school to receive $15 million that was included in the state budget. The plan also puts the small liberal-arts college on pace to request more than $200 million over the next five years.
“We are supporting the spending of a lot more money to educate a very small number of students that already cost exponentially more of state taxpayer dollars to educate, and I personally have concerns about that,” said Board of Governors member Eric Silagy, who voted against the plan during a meeting at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Silagy, a former president and CEO of Florida Power & Light, said the funding is “the equivalent of USF (the University of South Florida) asking for $13 billion” over five years.