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Sarasota School Called Top U.S. Public College Bargain

Posted on: Monday, 3 April 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Noah Bierman, The Miami Herald

Apr. 3--SARASOTA -- Brian Cody considered Columbia, Brown and other Ivy League schools, but he was lured by a recruiting letter that promised a "zany place" called New College.

This month, the North Florida resident sat at a "towne meeting" held among rows of palm trees as students passed motions to require their friends to take their pants off. Last week, students were planning to use student activity money to build a nacho cheese slip n' slide.

"There's something about New College that has like a buzz," explained Falon Mihalic, 22, an entomology major writing her senior thesis on small-hive beetles. "I know that sounds real airy-fairy, peace and love, man."

New College, a liberal arts school on Sarasota Bay, defies almost every trend in public higher education. Last week, the school was named the nation's top value among public universities by The Princeton Review college guide.

As one of Florida's 11 public universities, New College is grouped with Florida State, the University of Central Florida and other mega-campuses that rank among the nation's largest. But aside from low in-state tuition, it bears little resemblance to its sister schools, which increasingly focus on graduate programs, growth and what leaders call "workforce development" -- preparing students for jobs that fuel the economy.

While other schools' presidents contemplate the pros and cons of growing to 60,000 students, New College students -- all 761 of them -- take classes without grades and design their own curricula. The school has no football team, but it does have a club that meets "to discuss various conspiracy theories."

On campus, students worry New College's growth strategy, albeit modest, will change the school's character.

"There are signs of us getting closer to being like other state schools," said Mihalic, before jokingly paraphrasing student sentiment. "We're locking our doors, and there aren't as many naked parties."

New College opened as a private school 42 years ago on the former winter estate of circus magnate Charles Ringling, next to the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

'OPEN CURRICULUM'

Since the beginning, the school has had an "open curriculum," meaning no required classes. The theory was that motivated and smart students would thrive if they designed their academic program and worked on contracts with professors -- receiving detailed evaluations instead of grades.

In 1975, the school was absorbed by the state university system as an honors college of the University of South Florida, to protect it from insolvency. In 2001, legislators made it an independent college as part of a reorganization of USF's campuses.

With each change, students and alumni have worried: Would bigger schools swallow it? Standardize its curriculum? Would taxpayers support a school with no grades?

"In essentials, it's changed very little," said Aron Edidin, a 1977 graduate who has taught philosophy on campus for 17 years. "It provides a fabulous undergraduate education for students who are self-directed enough and good enough at sort of making connections with faculty.

"There are students who work better in highly structured arrangements -- and this isn't the place for them."

Not all students can handle the freedom, and some think the lack of grades means they can cruise, students say. But the school offers outlets for ideas that might be considered quirky elsewhere.

Take Trevor Caughlin, a 21-year-old biology and environmental studies major from Boise, Idaho. "I was really interested in tropical fruit trees, which isn't the best thing to do in Idaho," he said.

He chose New College after a professor impressed him with a deep, hour-long conversation about plants. As a freshman, he planted 200 trees -- ice cream beans, Indian almonds, mulberries, miracle berries -- "because I love fruit trees and also, it's a really good way to get people aware of the environment."

Last semester, Caughlin wanted to build awareness of a small orchard of calamondin trees next to the student center. So he requested $20 from the student government and baked eight vegan pies using the gumball-sized sour citrus -- passing them out in dorms.

"These are things I'd be doing anyway," he said. "But here I can get credit for it."

Fifteen years ago, fewer than half of New College's freshmen graduated within six years. Now, the school's 65 percent graduation rate is higher than the state average for full-time students -- 58 percent. But it's lower than the private liberal arts schools to which New College compares itself, which average about 72 percent.

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart may seem an unlikely fan of the liberal, structureless curriculum, but the Miami Republican fondly recalls his teachers at New College, where he designed his own history curriculum.

"Despite the fact that I was the only Cuban American and I was a leader of the pro-democracy [group] on campus, I was elected president," said the 1976 grad. "It was liberal, but there was genuine respect for diversity of thought."

This semester, New College is experiencing what President Mike Michalson calls an "enrollment bulge."

New College has been moving incrementally from 650 students to 800, Michalson said. But it went faster than planned -- 761 this fall -- prompting crowded dorm rooms and controversy.

"The students sort of threw a fit when we had 20 more students here than we had last year," said Gwendolyn Roberts, an editor at The Catalyst school newspaper. "The outcry was definitely heard and listened to."

Michalson promises to move more slowly, but he's floating a bigger number for the future: 1,200.

The school is also confronting diversity. In some ways it's a model, named the most gay-friendly college by Princeton Review in 2005. This semester, a much-talked-about guest speaker on campus was trans-gender performance artist Kate Bornstein.

Yet Michalson says the social and academic life can feel uncomfortable for minorities and first-generation college students.

"We're learning for learning's sake and that can be great," Michalson said. "People take it for granted that they'll get a job and that comes across a little cavalier."

Michalson hopes a larger student body will broaden the social life and add faculty, pointing to four black professors added to the 67-member faculty in the past five years.

New College may also face pressure from the outside. The school, with 11-1 student-teacher ratio, costs taxpayers more per student than other state schools. A foundation subsidizes $2.5 million of the school's budget, but it gets $12.4 million from tax dollars.

"While the state can provide the base, it's clear that there are limits," said Mark Rosenberg, state chancellor.

Rosenberg encourages school officials to raise more money in wealthy Sarasota. Meanwhile, he tells Gov. Jeb Bush and other politicians that New College keeps some of Florida's brightest students from leaving.

FULBRIGHT SCHOLARS

Michalson said the school leads the state in Fulbright Scholars and sends many students on to graduate schools.

Cody, the student attracted by the "zany" recruitment letter, is now a senior, a finalist for a Fulbright to Spain, then headed to the University of Chicago for grad school. This semester, he has been working on a project with students from a handful of other liberal arts colleges to determine the value of an open curriculum.

He's been interviewing alumni by telephone.

"No one has the same New College education," he said.

The alumni didn't emphasize a body of knowledge gained for a specific career. Instead, several alums told Cody: "I know how to learn how to learn."

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Source: The Miami Herald

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