Lawmakers appear poised to allow USC’s two-year Sumter campus to start offering four-year bachelor’s degrees.

That’s a bad idea, USC president Andrew Sorensen says. His concern is echoed by many of USC’s trustees and officials on the state’s Commission on Higher Education.

Yet education officials have refused to mount a lobbying effort against the Sumter plan or even estimate its cost.

That’s partly because the USC Sumter amendment is attached to a mammoth higher education bill that promises regulatory relief and millions of dollars in construction money for the state’s colleges.

Critics say the passive response to the Sumter plan is evidence of a broken system, where political muscle too often trumps sound education policy.

Supporters say the argument is simple — Sumter County is the largest county in the state without a four-year institution and the nearest is 40 miles away in Columbia.

That poses a problem for the large percentage of “nontraditional” students at USC Sumter — older, working students who may lack the time and resources to commute to school.

About 1,200 attended USC Sumter in 2003. The average student is 28 years-old; half attend part-time.

“They can get about three-quarters of what they need in Sumter (to earn a bachelor’s degree), but then they’ve got to pack up and head to Columbia,” said state Sen. John Land, D-Clarendon. “That doesn’t seem too fair, and it’s not possible for a lot of students.”

One of those students is David Trask, 46, a father of two who works at UPS and takes classes part time.

Trask had to change his major because he couldn’t get the classes he needed to earn a psychology degree at USC Sumter and couldn’t afford the 45-mile commute to Francis Marion University in Florence.

Still, Trask counts himself among the lucky ones.

“I know a lot of people who had to quit because they couldn’t get the classes they needed,” he said. “When you think about how many could be getting bachelor’s degrees, it would be great.”

Business leaders, who have been lobbying for the change since the mid-1980s, say the move could draw new industry and help fend off any attempts to close Sumter’s Shaw Air Force Base.

Local governments have pledged a combined $250,000 a year to help the school make the transition to four-year status.

“To be able to say we’ve got an institution that offers four-year degrees would be a big feather in our cap,” said Grier Blackwelder, president of the Greater Sumter Chamber of Commerce.

Community leaders got their wish in the waning days of the legislative session in June. Local lawmakers quietly attached the Sumter proposal to the larger higher education bill.

Only 15 of 46 state senators opposed the Sumter amendment; more than half of them were members of the Senate Education Committee, which never had a chance to review the proposal in committee.

“By every stretch of the imagination, it would be nothing more than a school of convenience,” said state Sen. Warren Giese, R-Richland, chairman of the Senate Education Committee and a former USC football coach. “It may be a great thing for Sumter, but it’s bad for the state of South Carolina.”

THE BEAUFORT CASE

Those on both sides of the USC Sumter debate point to another USC branch campus for ammunition — USC Beaufort, which made the transition to a four-year campus in 2002.

That move was supported by USC officials in Columbia and the state’s Commission on Higher Education.

Supporters of the USC Sumter initiative say there’s a blatant double standard.

“What we see is a different set of rules being applied here,” said state Sen. Phil Leventis, D-Sumter.

But there are differences between Sumter and Beaufort.

Beaufort is more geographically isolated than Sumter, and the Lowcountry county’s population grew by about 40 percent during the 1990s. Sumter County grew 3 percent.

The Beaufort community also pledged about $50 million in taxes and private money for the construction of a new campus and academic support.

Higher education officials say the $250,000 a year pledged by Sumter won’t cover hiring additional faculty needed to run a reputable four-year college or the administrative costs associated with the transition.

In a pointed November letter, Sorensen told USC Sumter dean Les Carpenter the school lacks the academic gravitas to be a four-year school.

“I am a long way from being convinced that there is a compelling case for such a change at USC Sumter,” Sorensen wrote in the letter, obtained by The State.

Sorensen, who strongly advocates scholarly research, called the USC Sumter faculty’s record of published works “grossly inadequate.”

Sorensen noted he personally published about the same amount of scholarly work as USC Sumter’s entire faculty, which has about 40 full-time professors.

The faculty at the Sumter campus was awarded about $2,000 in external research grants in 2003, compared with $900,000 from the Beaufort campus.

Carpenter declined to comment on the letter but said he’s committed to following Sorensen’s advice.

“I don’t think whether I agree with the president is relevant,” Carpenter said. “He’s the president and I work for him.”

But Leventis accused Sorensen of “academic snobbery” and “self-rightousness.”

“(Sorensen’s letter) is garbage, and it troubles me that he’s so far from reality,” said Leventis. “The students aren’t interested in rhetoric, they’re interested in getting degrees.”

ACADEMIC BOOTSTRAPPING

For some, the USC Sumter plan highlights the ongoing debate about the number of state colleges and their missions.

With 12 public four-year colleges, some argue South Carolina has too many schools offering the same types of degrees. That’s particularly true for a state with relatively low educational achievement and a skeletal education budget, critics say.

Last week, Gov. Mark Sanford proposed shutting down the two-year USC Union and USC Salkehatchie campuses for that very reason.

“The governor’s bottom line is the taxpayer’s bottom line — namely that we’ve got far too many publicly-funded colleges and universities chasing a limited supply of dollars,” said Sanford spokesman Will Folks in response to the Sumter proposal.

A recent independent study of the state’s higher education system concluded better coordination among colleges was needed, and that the system needed to be shielded from legislative fiats.

Still, education officials have been unwilling to fight the USC Sumter plan.

The state’s Commission on Higher Education, which is charged with coordinating the state’s 33 public colleges, hasn’t taken a stand on the issue.

Executive director Conrad Festa said he personally opposes the Sumter plan and is puzzled that the 14 commissioners haven’t lobbied against it.

“I think there’s a reluctance to get involved in what they see as the legislators’ business,” Festa said.

Perhaps one of the most troubling details of the USC Sumter proposal, Festa said, is that the amendment would allow the school to offer new degree programs without approval by the state commission.

That one-of-a-kind arrangement could increase duplication and further weaken efforts to coordinate education goals, he said. “This is why higher education policy is now so confused in this state,” he said.

Those who champion the Sumter plan are sympathetic, but say lofty arguments against a change of status for the school ignore reality.

“In a perfect world, you could say we have too many colleges,” Land said. “But in the individual world we live in, we need to pull ourselves up by our educational bootstraps and have a USC Sumter that offers four-year degrees.”

Reach Stensland at (803) 771-8358 or jstensland@thestate.com.