Has Joe Ricketts abandoned Richard Corcoran's New College grift?

Word has it the fake college is canceling its online joint venture with "Ricketts Great Books College" because of lack of student interest; and the billionaire's name has largely vanished. Why?

I am the proud product of a serious liberal arts education — both in my public schooling at Palatka High School and at private Amherst College. And I’ve been lucky to live a liberal arts life, with the tenets of joyful learning and serious thinking reinforced continually at home and with my extended family and friends.

Serious liberal arts citizens don’t get conned easily, so I was laughing at New College’s “Ricketts Great Books College Curriculum” online whirlygig thing right from the start. Here’s my article from December 2023. Go read it. It’s funny. There were many, many grift threads trying to weave themselves together in advance.

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Are the New College, Jefferson County, and Rufo grifts already converging?

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Thus, I am not remotely surprised to hear scuttlebutt now from multiple New College -connected sources that the Ricketts Great Books program will be canceled due to lack of student interest, starting this fall. Nor do I have any compunction publishing this scuttlebutt — because it is fun to do so.

I have asked New College to confirm or deny the scuttlebutt. I doubt they will. Here’s the note I sent yesterday to spokesman NCF Nathan March, who has answered me before, but not yet this time:

I’m hearing from multiple sources that the international online program announced with great fanfare is not being offered this fall by NCF. Can you confirm. I’ll prolly write something tomorrow early.

Also can you advise me if the college is still using Ricketts curriculum for any offering or program?

“Soft skills” are hard protection from grift — and much more than that

Contrary to the platitudes of serial grifter Richard Corcoran, president of the fake New College, and his gullible billionaire Joe Ricketts, a liberal arts education does not “teach you how to think” any more than lifting weights “teaches” you how to grow muscle.

Rather, thinking about useless woke things like art history and sociology and feminist literature (as well as Milton and Plato), for their own sake, provides a daily mental workout. It flexes and burns your curiosity and observation and reading and joy and applies them to the unpredictable situations and experiences of life.

Liberal arts provides practice in navigating human organizations and failings. It builds intellectual and moral anticipation of where politics or business or war or life is going so you can get there first.

It helps you make sound decisions with ambiguous information — and communicate them effectively. It “teaches” judgment by exposing you to life beyond any manual. A strong liberal arts mind quickly clocks bullshit and value alike.

Such a toned, curious mind becomes trainable in just about any form of career. But training is just the art of following manuals, which start dying as documents the moment anyone publishes them.

Liberal arts education helps you create manuals.

Business interests — who are generally not exposed to serious liberal arts — use the absurd phrase “soft skills” as a euphemism for “liberal arts.” On the contrary, good judgment, intellectual curiosity, strategic anticipation, and effective collaboration/leadership are very hard skills — and very much in demand.

Employers and the Florida Chamber of Commerce are begging today for strong liberal arts graduates with “soft skills” at the exact same time the geniuses destroying Florida colleges are closing the liberal arts weight rooms of the mind.

Why? I suspect it’s because “liberal arts” has the word “liberal” in it.

If we all decided to call it “conservative arts,” I bet we could get back to studying real history and encouraging kids to practice real thinking. I’ll make that trade, doofuses who lead Florida colleges. Will you?

A classic Corcoran over-promise?

Anyway, let’s recap the brief history of the New College Ricketts Great Books on-line program. New College sent a press release on February 15, touting the online offering, and its connection to anti-woke billionaire Ricketts and his “great books” curriculum.

Key excerpt:

New College was established on the foundation of great western traditions in the liberal arts. The New College faculty-led program includes Ricketts Great Books College materials and will expand access to these timeless lessons to a global audience. This program will empower students with a liberal arts education adapted for life in an ever-changing world by providing curriculum based on essential teachings from the greatest thinkers in history.  

“For college students today, it is essential they learn how to think, before embarking on a specialization and learning what to think” said Joe Ricketts, founder of Ricketts Great Books College. Ricketts added, “For 2,500 years this knowledge has been the bedrock of teaching students how to think independently. New College’s liberal arts degree, working in collaboration with Ricketts Great Books College, helps them develop critical thinking skills better than any other approach.

And there was more!!!

The online information page announced that Mr. Joe Ricketts would “generously,” personally hold the cost under $160 per class if a student worked hard and saw the program through to completion.

Where’s Ricketts? Crickets.

Of course, anyone who thought these people capable of launching and managing anything successfully did not watch Jefferson County or Richard Corcoran’s campaign for governor or his campaign to become FSU president.

Dude is allergic to work — and totally dependent on gullible patrons like Ron DeSantis and Joe Ricketts.

Fast forward just a few months, and neither Ricketts nor his scholarship money seem to be a thing anymore. LOL. Check out the current description.

New College of Florida debuted a version of its liberal arts degree in Spring 2024 that features classes offered through distance learning, supported by live video-conferencing seminars and discussion groups so that it is accessible to students everywhere. The liberal arts curriculum spans the period from Ancient Greece to the modern age. Planned program outcomes include a four-year bachelor’s degree or an associate in arts degree.

Students seeking a B.A. degree have the option of continuing as distance education students or finishing their studies on New College’s beautiful Sarasota Bay campus to combine their Great Books studies with other academic programs offered by the college. All students earning a degree will be invited to attend New College’s traditional May graduation ceremony.  

And there’s no mention of the $160 cap, personally, generously paid by Ricketts, if you work hard.

In fairness, if you watch the hype video still on the website, which I did (so you don’t have to), there is a brief screen flash of this halfway through:

But I don’t know when they made that hype video. Is it an artifact of a more Ricketts-centric time?

What happened, Mr. Ricketts? Call me.

Again, the core tenets of liberal arts education include the close study of human behavior, the application of observation, and the development of hypotheses that one can test against evidence.

Applying that model, I tend to agree with a hypothesis I heard from one of my sources. Paraphrasing:

Corcoran saw Ricketts as a giant ongoing ATM machine for his New College grift - and specifically Corcoran’s hilariously unmerited presidential salary. The on-line Great Books thing was a grift loss-leader for funding the endless churn of mediocre baseball players looking for playing time and a quick transfer, not Herodotus. I mean, Corcoran’s 7-figures aren’t going to pay themselves. Some rich guy gonna have to keep coughing it up.

It took Ricketts a little while to apply his own liberal arts skills and figure all this out. He’s probably embarrassed to be associated with Corcoran, whose rank incompetence and grifting are long public record. A true devotee of critical thinking would have considered that from the start. I mean, I did.

Corcoran's New College grift will mimic his Jefferson County grift, the scandal that dare not speak its name

Nobody likes to admit being conned, least of all self-reverentially critical thinking billionaires. So I suspect he slinked away quietly, never to be heard from again in Sarasota.

But, that’s just one hypothesis that matches my available observations. New College is certainly welcome to disprove it with Ricketts Great Books program enrollment numbers and its clear intentions for the fall.

Here’s another hypothesis: if anti-woke grifter Chris Rufo was Corcoran’s conduit to Ricketts — and he was — could there suddenly be trouble in the Corcoran/Rufo bromance that has captivated Greater Sarasota these past months? Or in the Ricketts/Rufo bromance?

I’d love to test all these hypotheses with Mr. Ricketts himself. I’m easy to reach. I hope he’ll call me.

And maybe we can even dispense with the farce of New College and start rebuilding the “conservative arts” together.