In January 2023, I ran across an intriguing news item about a small, public liberal arts college nestled along Sarasota Bay. New College of Florida, an institution of which I had been unaware, had been thrust into the news.

According to the headlines, Governor DeSantis invited immediate outrage and protests by remaking the school’s Board of Trustees and charging it with moving in a new direction. Beneath those headlines, however, it seemed clear that the “new” direction was hardly new. DeSantis sought to reinvigorate the classical education, commitment to critical thinking, and atmosphere of civil discourse long central to the existence of liberal arts colleges.

I was riveted. I’d stepped away from academia thirty years earlier, believing that American higher education had become a broken industry in deep need of reform. I’d wondered how long it would be before the problems attracted widespread notice. It took decades. In 2021, thinking that we may have crossed the threshold, I published The New Civil War about the corrupt incentive systems driving our colleges and universities—and the ways that that corruption was spilling outward to threaten America.

Less than two years later, I’d found the first public official willing to act. DeSantis’s announcement turned New College into the poster child for higher ed reform. I felt compelled to join the effort.

Thanks in part to contacts I’d developed while promoting my book, I was able to take my pitch to then-Interim President Richard Corcoran: “Half my credentials are academic. The other half are as a troubleshooter and problem solver. Just bring me to town and put me on the team. I’ll work with you to fix whatever needs to be fixed.” Shortly thereafter, I received a callback with my first assignment: Admissions.

I arrived on campus weeks before the start of the 2023/24 academic year. What I found cut quickly through the sensationalized, politicized stories then dominating the press. The New College of 2022 had been a failed institution. Not failing, failed.

Had it not been for the generosity of the Florida legislature, New College would have been one of the many American liberal arts colleges to have closed shop. Those of us who follow such things know that while small liberal arts colleges have played a storied role in the history of American higher education, their niche is dwindling quickly. Though many have devoted alumni, only the few with hefty endowments can survive.

At the most basic level, New College wasn’t attracting students. Its longstanding enrollment goal had been 300 students per year. It had never come close. The classes entering 2020 and 2021 failed to break 200.

Leadership had long been aware of the problem. In 2016, it launched a self-improvement plan with clear benchmarks. By 2023, it had moved backward along every dimension. Physical plant was in terrible shape. In June 2023, the new leadership conducted long overdue environmental safety assessments to discover toxic levels of black mold in the primary dorms.

In January 2023, New College was a failed public institution sitting on undeveloped bayfront acreage immediately adjacent to an airport. It’s not hard to conceive of the most likely alternative to a takeover, change of leadership, and new institutional direction.

With my third academic year coming to a close, I can state unequivocally that the turnaround has been stark. The experiment is succeeding.

The campus has been given a facelift. New parks and ballfields, a reinvigorated waterfront, and renovated buildings show that life and growth have replaced decay. Enrollment is up. Test scores have rebounded following the dip that any transition would bring.

Most of the faculty members committed to stale, failing ideas and methods have already departed. The majority of those who’ve remained have been joined by new, largely young colleagues deeply committed to restoring this jewel of public education. A refreshed curriculum, top-flight adjuncts, and exciting guest speakers round out the picture.

In just over three years, New College has become a model of liberal arts education for the twenty-first century.

Still, the blind rage continues. Alumni, Sarasota locals, and documentary filmmakers—vocal if not numerous—lament the New College they “lost.” Few seem willing to acknowledge that, other than those whose memories include only the latter half of the 2010s, “their” New College disappeared long ago. Complaints about the gap between what the institution was during its first forty years and what it is today may be warranted—but hurling them at the leadership committed to its restoration are oddly misplaced.

It’s beyond time for those critics to pay attention to what’s actually been happening. Discomfort with change is always understandable. Decrying change for the better is folly. The revitalized New College of Florida should be a source of pride—to its alumni, to Sarasota, to the state, and to everyone committed to restoring the ideals of critical thinking and civil discourse.

I, for one, am proud to be part of it.

Bruce Abramson is Executive Director, Graduate Applied Data Science Recruiting, Admissions & Internships at New College of Florida. He is the author of eight books, including The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021), discussing the corruption of American higher education.