Article #57638

New College of Florida to acquire USF Sarasota-Manatee in deal that leading Democratic lawmaker says ‘reeks of grift’

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”.