Coastal Carolina University had little state help in burgeoning from a two-year University of South Carolina outpost to the vibrant four-year institution it is today. So you'd think that given its booming enrollments, efficiency and educational innovation, Coastal would be in line for greater state support at last.

You'd be wrong. Gov. Mark Sanford last week included Coastal on a list of 13 state colleges and universities that he would see as "eligible" to lose entirely the small percentages of their budgets that the state provides. In return for going private, Sanford said, these and any other state schools that care to give up their public budgets can free themselves from state regulation. The only requirement he would impose on them is a covenant to provide favorable tuition rates for S.C. residents.

Loss of state support would be disastrous for local folks who see Coastal as their best hope of obtaining an affordable four-year college degree. Sanford's covenant notwithstanding, privatization would almost certainly mean stiff tuition increases for S.C. residents, as Coastal has few other places to go for operations money.

What we have here is a proposal steeped in political cowardice. Sanford would require the state colleges and universities that remain in the system to coordinate course offerings and shut down unproductive programs - a good idea. But he would leave untouched the problem responsible for the paltry state support that some schools, including Coastal, suffer: the hold-harmless provision at the heart of legislative higher education financing.

This provision guarantees schools with shrinking or flat student populations that they won't lose state dollars. Couple that with legislative unwillingness to fund higher education overall at a reasonable level and it becomes clear why schools such as Coastal with galloping enrollments do so poorly at the Columbia trough.

In 1993-94, says Vice President and University Counsel Edgar Dyer, state support made up 31.1 percent of the budget. By 1998-99, it had dwindled to just less than 26.8 percent. State support of Coastal is currently at about 16 percent and is projected to decline to less than 14.6 percent for the 2003-04 school year. Coastal's tuition, meanwhile increased as state support declined. Less productive schools get proportionally far more, even though they're not pulling their weight educationally.

In many other states, legislatures trim the budgets of schools whose enrollments decline, while throwing greater support to ones that are growing. In this fashion, they attempt to treat all students equally while getting maximum educational value out of taxpayer dollars.

What Sanford needs to do is blend an attack on the costly, inefficient, wasteful hold-harmless mentality with his privatization-coordination plan. That would reward Coastal and other schools with growing enrollments by giving them the wherewithal to keep tuition affordable. Schools in decline, meanwhile, could be encouraged to consolidate with other schools, seek new life in the private higher education market - or go out of business.

That may strike some as a mite too Darwinian, but a rationalist such as our governor should have no problem with that. The fittest schools should survive, and by that standard, Coastal is getting a raw deal.