New College momentum vs. manufactured narrative

A documentary this week. Another headline next week. The opposition campaign against New College of Florida has a playbook, and it is running it. But the facts on the ground tell a different story from the narrative being manufactured.

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I run a business. I manage real estate decisions and health care operations every day. When I look at New College of Florida, I see something that has become obscured by the volume of the opposition: a school that is growing, healing, and building momentum while a coordinated campaign works overtime to convince the public otherwise.

The format changes. The goal does not. The goal is to keep the story frozen in the past, to replay grievances, to make enough noise that the institution’s actual trajectory gets drowned out. It will not work because the facts are too visible.

New College is expanding enrollment. The campus environment, which suffered from years of deterioration before the current administration, is being rebuilt. Academic rigor is being strengthened. Students are arriving and staying. The numbers are moving in the right direction because of unglamorous, day-to-day institutional work.

Prior to the current administration, New College faced serious structural challenges: declining enrollment, a deteriorating physical campus, and a culture of instability. Those are not talking points. They are documented facts.

The documentary wants to make this about ideology. The discussion that needs to take place is about infrastructure, workforce, and the long-term economic health of this region.

Here is the practical picture. We have permanent academic buildings sitting underutilized on Sarasota Bay. We have students being housed in hotels and temporary structures at a significant cost to taxpayers. New College sits directly next door to the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus. If New College needs room to expand and nearby buildings are operating below capacity, consolidating that footprint is not controversial. It is strategic alignment. Paying multiples for temporary housing while permanent facilities sit underused is not a principled stand. It is waste.

Density strengthens institutions. Fragmentation weakens them.

I also work in health care. Programs like nursing are not just academic offerings. They are economic engines. Blake Medical Center, Sarasota Memorial, and regional providers depend on locally trained professionals. That pipeline must be protected and strengthened. Shared-use buildings, joint academic programs, and long-term workforce agreements can guarantee that health care training remains rooted in this region while New College builds the density it needs to be sustainable. These are not competing objectives. They are complementary ones.

What concerns me most is the waste that results when institutional battles prevent cooperation. When we leave buildings partially empty, pay premium costs for temporary solutions, and allow manufactured conflict to prevent alignment, we weaken the region’s economic foundation. Higher education is infrastructure. It attracts talent. Talent builds companies. Companies create jobs. Jobs create a tax base.

The opposition can release another documentary. It can generate another week of headlines. What it cannot do is change the enrollment trajectory, undo the campus improvements, or stop the students who are choosing New College right now.

Sarasota and Manatee counties have built hospitals, expanded business districts, and aligned public and private efforts for decades. We understand long-term investment. What is in front of us is an institution on an upward arc, a region with genuine workforce needs, underutilized infrastructure that should be activated, and an opposition campaign that is running out of credible arguments.

The noise will continue. So will the work.

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Lance Karp is an award-winning dentist and Sarasota-based business executive who has served on the Board of Trustees of New College of Florida since 2021.