College rankings are often controversial and somewhat arbitrary, but they are popular—U.S. News says its website receives 100 million visitors annually. Colleges and universities understand their value and selectively use the rankings to their advantage. Other groups who want to weigh in will do the same.

Earlier this week, New College of Florida sent a press release announcing that Washington Monthly, The Princeton Review and U.S. News & World Report had all ranked the school among the country's best public liberal arts colleges for 2027. 

Washington Monthly ranked New College No. 9 on its list of "2026 Best Colleges for Your Tuition (and Tax) Dollars: Southeast," which highlights "access, affordability, outcomes and promoting public service" at colleges—not academia. 

The Princeton Review also focused on New College's financial aid options and value for money while also placing it on lists of "how interesting students find their professors" and "how accessible those professors are." New College was named to its list of best colleges in the South, "Best 392 Colleges" and "Top 50 Colleges That Create Futures" (in other words: schools that excel at career prep), but those lists aren't ranked, nor do they focus on academia.

And U.S. News & World Report placed New College at No. 16 in the category of "Top Public Schools," which specifically ranks public liberal arts colleges. Last year, its rank was No. 10 and in 2025, it was No. 7.

“Last year I said we were determined to earn top rankings across multiple national publications,” Corcoran said in a statement announcing the recent rankings. “These metrics prove the positive outcomes New College is creating."

But here's the catch: Almost all of this year's rankings, across each publication, focus on New College's affordability, faculty accessibility and social mobility—not its academic rigor. 

From its inception in 1960, New College was known for its cerebral student body and rigorous, personalized curriculum, as well as for the number of students who received Fulbright scholarships, widely recognized as one of the most prestigious grants in the world. 

In 2023, the college underwent a dramatic transformation: its board of trustees was overhauled and replaced with conservative appointees by Gov. Ron DeSantis; its president, Dr. Patricia Okker, was fired and replaced by former politician Richard Corcoran; and it began to embrace conservative political ideologies and a focus on sports and athletic recruitment. 

Since the takeover, the college's ranking as a "Best Liberal Arts College" among all liberal arts colleges by U.S. News has dropped every year, falling from No. 76 in 2023 to No. 150 for 2027. 

This is also the first year since 2005 that it produced no Fulbright scholars.

The Novo Collegian Alliance (NCA), which has been documenting the transformation of the college since the board restructuring, points out that millions of dollars have been redirected from academics to athletic facilities and recruitment since 2023, including $2.5 million that was moved from the college's housing fund to build a new baseball field—despite a lack of housing for its students. With its recent acquisition of the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, the college will also quadruple its debt at the same time as its per-student costs to earn a bachelor's degree skyrocket to nearly $500,000.  (For comparison, that same cost at the University of Florida is $150,729; at the University of Central Florida, it's $46,548.)

William Rosenberg, the NCA's president, offered a sharp counterpoint to Corcoran's celebration. "As he has done many times in the past, Richard Corcoran has demonstrated his skill in cherry picking," Rosenberg said in a statement responding to the rankings. "He recently trumpeted select facts that seem to show that New College’s ranking is improving. In truth, the college continues its downward spiral. New College's ranking has fallen from 76 to 150.  At this point, alumni are saying that the College's governing board has a duty to react. For the million-dollar compensation package Corcoran is receiving, Florida’s taxpayers are entitled to honesty, not window dressing." 

Is New College rising or falling? It depends on which ranking you choose to use and how you want to interpret it.

For an in-depth, alternative look at how rankings can be construed, check out this post on Nathan Allan's Substack, Novum Collegium Fidelis.