John Oliver called New College of Florida a "complete shit show" on Sunday.
New College just hit the highest enrollment in its entire history.
That's the whole story – and Oliver spent half an hour trying to make sure you didn't notice.
What Oliver Said vs. What Actually Happened
Last Week Tonight dedicated its main segment to DeSantis's 2023 overhaul of New College – the small Sarasota liberal arts school that conservatives retooled into a classical education model.
Oliver's verdict: disaster.
The actual results: record enrollment topping 900 students.
The British comedian hit every predictable note.
He mocked the new mascot.
He grieved the eliminated gender studies department – which, as Oliver himself admitted, had a total budget of $7,000 and a part-time office manager.
https://twitter.com/christopherrufo/status/2044085520448336045?s=20
Seven thousand dollars.
That's what he's defending.
Oliver also attacked President Richard Corcoran's salary – north of $1 million including bonuses – while somehow missing the enrollment numbers sitting right in front of him.
Oliver isn't a journalist making an honest mistake.
He's a Democrat operative with a comedy budget, and this segment was built to do one thing: poison the blueprint before other red states can copy it.
The Real Story Oliver Won't Tell
Before DeSantis intervened, New College was in freefall.
Enrollment had collapsed from 861 students in 2016 to just 632 by 2021.
The school was bleeding students, bleeding relevance, and hemorrhaging taxpayer money with nothing to show for it.
DeSantis looked at a failing institution propped up by DEI bureaucracy and gender theory programs with four-figure budgets, and he made a decision: fix it.
Christopher Rufo – Oliver's primary villain for the evening – wasn't hiding the plan.
He said publicly that the left had "dominated the universities for generations" and that conservatives needed to recapture higher education.
He was right.
And it worked.
Scholarship funding rose, new programs launched, and for three straight years the school has brought in over 300 new students annually – a streak that doesn't exist anywhere in New College's prior history.
US News ranked it the tenth-best public liberal arts college in the country.
Oliver skipped that part entirely.
What This Is Really About
Florida taxpayers – working families, small business owners, retirees – were funding a gender studies program with a $7,000 budget that the left called essential.
When conservatives pointed that out, the left called it a culture war attack.
When they eliminated it, Oliver called it a catastrophe.
The real catastrophe was what came before: a school shrinking toward irrelevance, graduating fewer and fewer students, celebrated by the left precisely because it had no standards anyone outside a faculty lounge could defend.
DeSantis didn't destroy New College.
He found it already broken and fixed it – with accountability, clear standards, and an actual growth plan.
https://twitter.com/swalker_7/status/2064044352989520259?s=20
Oliver's response is to spend thirty minutes complaining about a mascot that looks like Groot.
Red states watching Florida should take note: this is the blueprint.
When you clean out the ideological capture, scrub the DEI bureaucracy, and replace feelings-based curriculum with something students and parents actually want – enrollment goes up.
Oliver knows that.
He knows New College hit record enrollment.
He knows the $7,000 gender studies department he's eulogizing couldn't fill a broom closet with serious students.
And he still went on HBO and called it a failure, because admitting that conservatives built something that works would cost him more than one bad episode rating.
That's not commentary.
That's panic.
Sources:
- David Rancourt, "The Rebirth of New College," Florida Politics, September 8, 2025.
- Clinton Engelberger, "Did New College of Florida's Enrollment Grow Under Conservative Leadership?" Suncoast Searchlight, March 20, 2026.
- Richard Corcoran, "New College Critics Are Misreading the Data – Here's the Truth," Florida Politics, April 21, 2026.
- Governor Ron DeSantis, "Governor DeSantis Commends New College of Florida's Transformation," Executive Office of the Governor, 2023.
- "Gov. DeSantis Appoints Urban Meyer to New College's Board of Trustees," Florida Politics, December 31, 2025.
