New College’s costly reform underperforms

Both items document top‑down, political remaking of higher‑education curricula and governance: the article reports a Kremlin effort (Valery Fadeyev leading a new textbook) to reshape university teaching toward state narratives, analogous to the New College case where political control reshaped outcomes and priorities; the common claim is that political capture of universities alters long‑run institutional capacity and civic formation.

That existing item documents how ideologically driven institutional changes can degrade outcomes; the Mamdani article engages the inverse point—arguing that concentrated, accountable authority (mayoral control) enabled measured education gains and that dismantling such structures for ideological reasons risked undoing progress.

Both stories document ambitious institutional redesigns that fail to deliver and then produce downstream institutional damage; Tulsa’s honors college was created as a liberal‑education experiment and then financially gutted (92% cut), echoing the New College example where political/administrative changes produced worse outcomes than promised.

Both pieces interrogate education reforms that are politically driven and argue those reforms can worsen outcomes despite high spending: the New College item documents ideological takeover and falling outcomes after expensive reforms, while this article argues pursuing integration and compliance with class‑size mandates risks diverting money from high‑need districts and repeating prior politically motivated failures (de Blasio vs Bloomberg). The actor connection is explicit (mayoral/chancellor policy choices) and both use institutional evidence to question reform priorities.

Both pieces interrogate prevailing stories about higher education: the existing item documents a high‑profile policy experiment that failed to deliver student‑outcome gains, while this article shows that broad public narratives of higher‑ed collapse are inconsistent with enrollment and earnings data — together they suggest the politics of higher ed (reforms, outrage) can be decoupled from aggregate performance.

Both pieces diagnose politically motivated higher‑education projects (Florida’s New College; Austin’s UATX) that raise large donor expectations but risk poor student outcomes and unsustainable per‑student economics; Kling’s article concretely names donor dependence, accreditation risk, and mission drift—the same failure modes the New College case documents.

ProPublica lists investigations into education corruption and governance (for example the Texas charter superintendent making $870k), which connects to the broader strand of reporting and analysis showing that ideological or top‑down higher‑ed restructurings can raise spending without improving outcomes — the existing 'New College' idea about expensive reforms underperforming.

New College’s reported $118.5M budget for under 900 students (≈$134k per student) alongside falling retention/graduation and rankings.