Thanks to the S.C. General Assembly's failure to tackle one of the most wasteful segments of state government, higher education, students at Coastal Carolina University face dramatically higher tuition costs next fall. For this, some students and their parents may blame the university's board of trustees, which last week approved a 19 percent tuition boost for S.C. students and a 9 percent boost for out-of-state students. But this would be short-sighted and unfair.

The root problem is that the allocation of state money to support state universities and technical colleges is politically determined. Coastal and its next-door neighbor, Horry-Georgetown Technical College, like their home community, are experiencing growth booms. Each new student places a strain on faculty members and campus facilities - dorms, labs, classrooms, parking lots, etc.

Lottery-funded scholarships to some students don't come close to meeting these cost pressures. Coastal President Ron Ingle and his staff plan a major fund-raising campaign - a great idea. But that won't offset the fundamental inequity that's hurting the university: Legislators apportion proportionally more money per student to slower growing S.C. colleges and universities. How much a given school gets is pretty much a function of its clout with legislators.

Couple that way of doing the business of public higher education with the sheer volume of colleges and universities to be helped:

Thirteen four-year universities, plus four two-year branches of the University of South Carolina;

Sixteen technical colleges; and

S.C. private colleges, which also get varying levels of state support.

So it's no wonder Coastal trustees balanced the budget for the coming school year by asking students to pay higher tuition costs. The other option, cutting faculty, staff and maintenance budgets, was unacceptable when the school is under pressure to improve the quality of its academic offerings.

During the 2002 gubernatorial campaign, candidate Mark Sanford, who won the election, noted the inefficiency of the S.C. higher-education system. "The bottom line," he wrote in his platform, "is that reform is needed because funding for higher education has grown in real terms. ... [Y]et many parts of the overall system are uncoordinated and as a consequence, higher education in South Carolina is not meeting its potential."

Sanford saw as the solution upgrading the S.C. Commission on Higher Education from a coordinating board to a governing board with broad powers to execute higher-education budgets. He chose not to press for that reform this year - probably a wise choice, as money is unusually tight and legislators have other Sanford reform proposals on their plates.

But Grand Strand residents have special reason to hope that higher-education funding reform moves to the top of Sanford's list - soon. The community is depending on Coastal and HGTC to take more visible and forceful roles in economic development and cultural enhancement. That takes money - and with last week's increase, Coastal trustees have reached the point of diminishing returns on tuition increases.