Oversight panel needed to resist education ‘creep’

CLEMSON UNIVERSITY wants to build a campus in Charleston especially for restoration and preservation projects. Powerful legislator Glenn McConnell wants it to restore the Confederate submarine Hunley, his personal talisman. So what’s the problem?

Put simply: This way lies madness. This is how South Carolina came to have such an uncoordinated hodgepodge of a higher education system: 33 institutions with more than 80 campuses.

There is no statewide plan. This leaves institutions looking for their own growth options hooking up with legislators such as Sen. McConnell who have a pet project — and the ability to direct taxpayer dollars.

When Gov. Mark Sanford decries “mission creep” — institutions taking on new projects only tangentially related to their larger efforts — he is putting his finger on a major way that South Carolina dilutes its effectiveness. South Carolina is far from a wealthy state; it has important needs that it must meet, from better public schools to more secure prisons. Even in years of economic growth, it has no resources that it can squander on nonessentials. This state has to invest its limited resources wisely.

How could it do that in higher education? With a comprehensive plan for public universities, and a body empowered to implement that plan. A panel appointed by the governor became the most recent of many groups to call for a central plan for the state’s education. And such a plan will not be followed unless some oversight panel has the power to see that it is.

Universities understandably have chafed at the idea of a board of regents or similar panel, especially at a time when state financial support has been cut back considerably. While the universities definitely deserve more financial support from the state, they can’t make a case for it when there are too many of them, with too many campuses, and too many competing programs.

Lawmakers, take note: Gov. Sanford got reelected saying a restructuring of state government would be his No. 1 priority. The fractured nature of the state’s higher education system is a clear example of how South Carolina spreads around decision-making ability, then doesn’t get the most for its money.

An oversight panel should have the power to set priorities for the state’s educational system and look for needless overlap in services. And it would ask universities how their new missions fit into the state’s educational priorities. If Clemson had to explain to such a panel how its Charleston restoration campus — built around Sen. McConnell’s beloved Hunley — was a key use of the state’s limited public resources, would it pass muster? Unlikely, to say the least.

Until the state sets up such priorities and a body to enforce them, the “mission creep” that Gov. Sanford decried in this project will inevitably continue, at the expense of higher education quality.