New College of Florida — FY 2026-27 Proposed Budget Analysis

The structural picture

The Florida Legislature cut NCF’s General Revenue appropriation by $25M for FY 2026-27 (from $69.3M to $44.2M, −36%[src: Page 2, Grand Summary Revenues]). The proposed budget responds to that cut by shrinking total spending by $17.7M while growing Salaries & Benefits by $7.9M and quadrupling Athletics expenditures — paying for the math with a $14M draw on Carry Forward reserves and a $3M jump in Foundation contributions.

This is a structurally insolvent budget presented as balanced. Recurring obligations (scholarships, salaries) are being funded by one-time reserves; donor money is substituting for state appropriations; deferred-maintenance lines are being further cut while a $30M Legislative Budget Request asks for $3M in “Historic Buildings Deferred Maintenance.” The FY 2026-27 figures will be revised after the August 15 BOG submission, so what trustees are voting on is not the final filing.

What’s new or substantially different from prior years

The FY 2026-27 budget changes are unusually concentrated. Eleven existing lines move more than 40%, and seven brand-new initiatives appear that have no precedent in prior years.

Substantial changes to existing lines

Brand-new in this budget (no prior-year precedent)

• Carry Forward as a structural funding source ($14.0M). Prior year listed Carry Forward as “TBD”; FY 26-27 budget is structurally balanced on it. Funds recurring scholarship, OPS, and other obligations.
• Multi-Purpose Building, PECO Priority #5 ($63.5M total). First appearance as a full multi-year construction project; $5.05M already received, $31.7M in FY 27-28, $26.7M in FY 28-29. 35,136 sq ft of office vs 2,000 sq ft of classroom.
• Strategic Campus Land Acquisition ($15M non-recurring LBR ask). Buy out 30.94 acres of SMAA-leased east-campus land.
• The Freedom Institute ($5M recurring LBR ask). No academic home, no founding director, no peer-institute benchmark disclosed. Mission language is explicitly political.
• Hospitality, Biotechnology, Film programs and a Polling Institute ($3M recurring LBR ask). Four new programs in unaccredited disciplines, layered on top of recent (and struggling) MS Marine Science and MS Education launches.
• Critical Campus Safety ($4M recurring LBR ask). Adds 5 sworn officers and security technicians. LBR narrative explicitly ties the need to “aggressive campus expansion” and “expanded athletic programs.”
• Historic Buildings Deferred Maintenance ($3M recurring LBR ask). Requests recurring state funding for maintenance while simultaneously cutting the existing E&G Physical Plant line 80% — the maintenance request is on top of, not inside, the operating budget.

The funding base: a $25M state cut

The Florida Legislature cut NCF’s General Revenue (E&G) appropriation by $25M for FY 2026-27. This single number determines every other choice in the budget. The proposed budget does not absorb the cut through proportional reductions; it absorbs it by shifting recurring obligations to Carry Forward reserves, shifting institutional aid to the Foundation, and growing Salaries & Benefits anyway.

Per the General Revenue footnote, the proposed FY 26-27 figure includes a $4,135,957 institutional Performance Based Funding (PBF) investment and an estimated $4,907,068 state PBF investment. PBF requires NCF to meet metrics where the October 2025 BOG Efficiency Study identified the school as underperforming. The trustees should ask what scenario the budget assumes if PBF metrics aren’t met.

Personnel up, total budget down

Salaries & Benefits grow $7.88M (+19%) on a budget that shrinks $17.7M (−15%). Every dollar cut elsewhere is being routed into personnel, and per-student personnel cost crosses $56,000 at 880 enrollment — for personnel only, before any operations, scholarships, or facilities.

Foundation Executive Salaries simultaneously drops $600K ($1.50M → $0.90M[src: Page 8, Foundation Support]). The most likely interpretation: a senior salary moved from Foundation to E&G, not that a position was eliminated. Without a position-level disclosure, trustees can’t tell.

Layered on top: the FY 27-28 LBR proposes 22 new faculty FTE and 15 new staff FTE (37 total) for the same sub-1,000-student campus. The current 49 EADA coaches already aren’t fully accounted for in the state operating budget (see the 49-coaches section of the main budget deep-dive).

Athletics 4×, and the housing-reserve raid

Athletics Expenditures grow from $0.81M to $3.24M (+300%), and Athletic Fee revenue grows from $284K to $2.79M (+880%). Footnote 2 on page 7 discloses that $2.5M of the Athletic Fee total is transferred from the Housing Auxiliary reserve to fund a baseball field. The college obtained special permission from the state to redirect housing fees to athletics capital.

Special permission is itself the story. Housing fees were collected from students for residence-life expenses; the reserves represent prior years’ surpluses over those expenses. The fact that NCF needed a state-level exemption to redirect them is an admission that this is not a normal use of housing-fee revenue — it’s a carve-out specific to this transfer. Trustees should be told who at the state level granted the exemption, what conditions attach to it, and whether this is a one-time carve-out or a precedent.

The LBR’s $4M Campus Safety ask explicitly cites “expanded athletic programs” as the driver. EADA discloses 49 coaches; the operating budget shows only 5 FTE labeled as Athletics. The headcount gap is at least partly a measurement artifact — coaches paid under Other Personal Services (OPS) classification show up as dollars in E&G but zero FTE (see the headcount-gap analysis on the main deep-dive). The aggregate athletic-personnel cost across Salaries + OPS, spread over Athletics, Student Recruiting, Admissions, and the LBR’s athletics-driven safety needs, has not been presented to the board as a single number.

Deferred maintenance, formally cut

The October 2025 BOG Efficiency Study explicitly criticized NCF’s deferred-maintenance underspend. This budget cuts maintenance further:

• E&G Physical Plant O&M: $10.19M (FY 25-26 approved) → $2.05M (FY 26-27 proposed). -80%.
• Physical Plant Operations & Maintenance (all funds): $19.96M → $11.60M. -42%.
• CITF, Deferred Maintenance & PECO: $16.39M → $8.77M. -47%.

The FY 27-28 LBR then asks for $3M recurring in “Historic Buildings Deferred Maintenance” — additional state funding on top of the now-cut operating line. This is the budget mechanism for arguing “we need more money for deferred maintenance” while operationally cutting deferred maintenance. The two moves cancel.

Recurring obligations funded by one-time reserves

The E&G page (page 4) discloses two extraordinary moves via footnotes 3 and 4:

• Footnote 4: “Additional Scholarships & Financial Aid funding of $7,071,117 provided from estimated Carry Forward.”
• Footnote 3: “Other Personnel Services funding of $1.5 million provided from estimated Carry Forward.”

Scholarships are recurring commitments to enrolled students. Other Personnel Services covers ongoing temp/part-time staffing. Both are being funded for FY 26-27 from Carry Forward — accumulated reserves from prior years. Carry Forward is one-time money funding recurring obligations. This is the textbook structural deficit pattern.

The total Carry Forward balance is not disclosed in the trustee packet, and neither is the projected draw schedule. Without that, trustees cannot tell how many fiscal years the cushion supports before scholarships and OPS fall off a cliff. This is the single most important number missing from the document.

Foundation substitution

Foundation Revenue grows 79% ($4.05M → $7.25M) almost entirely from the Scholarships & Enhancements line ($1.46M → $5.20M, +$3.74M). The size of the Foundation increase roughly matches the E&G Scholarship cut that moved to Carry Forward.

Foundation gifts are typically donor-restricted; whether the Foundation’s unrestricted pool can sustainably absorb $5.2M of scholarship spending is not disclosed. If the Foundation’s gift inflows don’t support this run rate, the budget assumes corpus drawdown. Trustees should ask for the Foundation’s forward-looking cash-flow projection, donor-restriction breakdown, and corpus balance.

Category restructure defeats year-over-year comparison

The FY 25-26 BOT-approved column carries a single “General Operating Expenses” line at $39.74M with zeros in Academic Instruction & Student Support, Housing Aux, and Administration. The FY 25-26 actual and FY 26-27 proposed columns flip those — General Operating Expenses goes to $0 and the new categories carry the dollars.

The fiscal year starts July 1, so this is not a within-year reclassification — it’s a between-year change in how the same fiscal year is presented. Trustees who approved FY 25-26 under one set of categories cannot now compare it to FY 26-27 under different categories without a written crosswalk. The crosswalk is not included in the packet.

This is on top of the FY 24-25 mid-year reclassifications that moved roughly $9M of labeled spending between Admin Direction, Physical Plant, and Student Services (see the Student Services breakdown of the main deep-dive). Combined, two consecutive years of category changes mean year-over-year comparisons in this packet are not actually comparable. That is the practical effect, regardless of intent.

The Multi-Purpose Building and the land deal

Two capital items dominate the 5-year CIP:

I.M. Pei Buildings Revitalization ($7.35M, PECO #1), Jane Bancroft Cook Library Renovation ($5.66M, PECO #2), and the Shared-Use Chiller Plant Expansion ($6.93M, PECO #3) are conventional facility requests. Note that the library renovation is $5.66M while the FY 26-27 Library & Other Academic Resources operating line is being cut from $1.50M to $0.66M — the shell of the library is being prioritized over what runs inside it.

The $30M Legislative Budget Request

The FY 27-28 LBR[src: Pages 21-28] is a single unified $30M ask: $15M recurring + $15M non-recurring. Five “strategic pillars”:

The LBR projects 22 new faculty FTE + 15 new staff FTE (37 total). For a college whose Salaries & Benefits line is already growing $7.9M in the operating budget, this represents continued personnel intensification. The Year-4 graduation target of 150 specialized grads/year in the new programs implies a recruitment-funnel assumption nowhere disclosed.

Operational capacity for new programs

The LBR’s “Workforce Development” ROI section claims NCF has produced “zero graduates in targeted, high-growth sectors like Biotechnology, Hospitality, Film, or Data Polling” and projects 150 specialized grads/year by Year 4. The framing implies historical neglect; in reality NCF was founded as a liberal-arts honors college focused on humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and the “zero graduates” claim is a feature of that founding mission, not a failure of it.

More importantly, NCF’s recent program launches suggest the institution currently lacks the operational capacity to scale four new disciplines at once:

• MS in Marine Science launched 2025;
• MS in Education launched 2026.

Both are still in their early enrollment cycles and have not yet demonstrated steady recruitment, retention, or graduation pipelines. Adding four more programs in unaccredited vocational/professional disciplines — each requiring its own SACSCOC substantive-change pathway, faculty recruitment, equipment, and accreditation timeline — assumes operational capacity NCF has not yet demonstrated at the two-program scale.

On regional competition: USF Sarasota-Manatee is closing its campus, which removes one nearby competitor. But Ringling College (top-tier Film) remains, and the Biotech/Hospitality/Polling space is well-served by larger Florida institutions whose scale and program maturity NCF cannot match in the LBR’s 4-year window. The risk isn’t that NCF can’t recruit students into the new programs — it’s that the programs underperform their enrollment targets while their fixed costs (22 new faculty FTE, equipment, accreditation) are already committed.

Outstanding trustee questions

Twenty questions trustees should have written answers to before voting. Grouped by topic.

On the structural budget

1. What is the total Carry Forward balance as of June 15, 2026, and what is the recurring-vs-one-time split of the $14M being drawn down? At this burn rate, when does the cushion fall below the level needed to keep scholarships funded?
2. Provide a written FY 25-26 BOT-approved → FY 25-26 actual → FY 26-27 proposed crosswalk showing where each line migrated as categories restructured.
3. The proposed budget balances Revenues = Expenditures at $100,856,643 exactly. Was this constructed by adjusting Carry Forward to close the gap? What is the unfunded structural deficit before the Carry Forward plug?
4. What is the contingency if the $4.9M state PBF investment isn’t earned because NCF doesn’t meet metrics? What does the budget look like with PBF at zero?

On personnel

5. Salaries & Benefits grow $7.9M (+19%) on a shrinking budget. Provide a position-level summary: net new FTE by faculty / administration / athletics / IT / facilities. Which positions are being added.
6. Foundation Executive Salaries drops $600K. Which executive position(s) moved off Foundation, and to where?

On athletics

7. The $2.5M Housing Auxiliary → Athletic Fee transfer required special state permission. Who at the state level granted it, what conditions attach, and is this a one-time carve-out or a precedent for future transfers?
8. EADA discloses 49 coaches; the operating budget shows ~5 FTE in Athletics-Administrative Support. Other Personal Services (OPS) classification would explain a meaningful share of the gap — OPS dollars sit in E&G but the personnel don’t count toward FTE. What is the aggregate athletic-personnel cost (Salaries + OPS) across Athletics, Student Recruiting, Admissions, and any other affected Program Component code, and how is this presented to the board?

On facilities and capital

9. The Oct 2025 BOG Efficiency Study criticized NCF’s deferred maintenance. This budget cuts maintenance further. What is the current documented deferred maintenance backlog in dollars, and how is the proposed cut consistent with the BOG critique?
10. On the Multi-Purpose Building: justify the 18× office-to-classroom ratio for an 880-student campus targeting growth to 1,200. Which existing offices are vacated, and what is the post-occupancy plan for freed space?
11. On the $15M Land Acquisition: provide the current annual SMAA lease cost, a third-party parcel appraisal, SMAA’s commitment letter, and the FAA height / noise / RPZ restrictions that survive acquisition. What redevelopment options does fee-simple ownership actually unlock?

On the Legislative Budget Request

12. The Freedom Institute ($5M recurring): proposed institutional home (division, school, department), founding director, peer-institute benchmark with comparable budget, governance structure, and post-state-funding sustainability plan.
13. The Polling Institute (under Programmatic Expansion) and the Freedom Institute’s polling/polling-science activities overlap. Are they duplicative? If distinct, what is the org chart?
14. Given the operational strain of launching MS Marine Science (2025) and MS Education (2026), what is the realistic SACSCOC substantive-change timeline for Biotechnology, Hospitality, Film, and the Polling Institute? What does the budget look like if accreditation slips beyond Year 4?
15. The LBR’s Year-4 target of 150 specialized graduates/year and 85% in-state placement: what are the recruitment-funnel assumptions (applications, admits, yield, retention) underlying that number? Provide a sensitivity scenario at 50% of plan.

On governance and process

16. Has the search for a permanent VP-Finance & Administration concluded? The presenter is signed as “Acting” in the first agenda item and permanent in the second; clarify the current title and search timeline.
17. The footnote indicates FY 26-27 figures will be updated after the August 15 BOG submission. Are trustees voting on the figures in this packet or on the right of administration to file an updated version?
18. The October 2025 BOG Efficiency Study identified NCF as the SUS’s least efficient institution. Which specific findings has this budget responded to, and where in the packet are those responses disclosed?
19. Tuition & Fee revenue dropped from $5.52M approved → $4.71M actual collected. The FY 26-27 budget assumes another drop to $3.69M. What is the underlying enrollment + discount-rate trajectory, and what is the FY 26-27 fall headcount actually projected?
20. The Foundation is being asked to operate $3.7M above its prior run rate, much of it on Scholarships & Enhancements. What does the Foundation’s forward-looking gift forecast, donor-restriction breakdown, and corpus balance look like?

Methodology & sources

• Primary source. NCF Board of Trustees Finance & Administration Committee Materials, Agenda Item 6, June 30, 2026 meeting. PDF distributed to trustees in advance of the vote.
• Comparisons. All FY 25-26 figures are the BOT-approved budget (06.26.25) unless explicitly labeled “actual” (6.15.26 year-to-date). Prior-year comparisons (FY 23-24, FY 24-25) reference the FL BOG SUS operating budget workbook analyzed in the main NCF Budget Deep-Dive.
• External cross-references. EADA AY 2024-25 (athletics coaching headcount), IPEDS F1A / F2 / EFIA / S2023_OC (financial and HR), and the October 29, 2025 Florida BOG State University System Efficiency Study.
• Page citations. All “[src: Page N]” markers reference the page numbering of the trustee packet PDF as distributed.

Analysis prepared for trustees and the public ahead of the June 30, 2026 vote. Independent analysis; not affiliated with NCF or the Florida BOG. Where the budget narrative makes claims (e.g., “most fiduciary responsible use of taxpayer dollars”) without supporting figures, this analysis flags the missing figures rather than accept the claim.