About
The New College of Florida is a public liberal arts college in Sarasota, Florida, United States.
Founded in 1960, it opened in 1964 and was a private college. It ran into financial difficulty in the 1970s and was merged into the University of South Florida. In 2001, it became an autonomous college within the state university system of Florida, and was designated by statute as "the residential liberal arts honors college" for the state. Division of land holdings and sharing of some facilities followed for creation of a satellite campus for the University of South Florida that would become its Sarasota-Manatee campus on much of the Seagate subdivision and some of The Uplands subdivision.
In 2023, the state government of Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis summarily replaced the New College board of trustees in an attempt to transform the honors college into a conservative institution modeled on Hillsdale College, a private, Evangelical Christian school. Nearly 40% of the faculty resigned.
The college has the smallest student enrollment in the State University System of Florida; as of 2026, it has 710 students and 94 faculty members for student-faculty ratio of roughly 8:1.
The college is a member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges.