Privatization is a bad idea

e-mail this story discuss this issue in our forums

Gov. Mark Sanford unveiled a plan in recent days that would give 13 state colleges — the three research universities and 10 teaching colleges — the option to leave the state system. It is a largely untested strategy clearly unwanted by state colleges without the endowments and the private means to make up for state funds.

It is bad idea for reasons practical, historical and philosophical. Foremost is the negative impact it would have on student access. In a state among the bottom third in the nation in income — and already struggling with the highest tuition increases in the region over the past three years due mostly to state budget cuts — tuition would rise even more.

Schools are already scrambling to cover the overall drop in public appropriations to colleges. Public dollars have diminished from nearly 40 percent of the budgets at Clemson University and the University of South Carolina to less than a quarter over a decade. Adding to this tuition pressure would invite greater increases.

Also, the state would be abdicating its higher education responsibility in a way no other state has done. Talk of privatization — and it is just talk in most states — has not typically included entire universities. The most serious privatization talks — in Massachusetts and Virginia — have been limited to specific areas, such as law schools.

Sanford is essentially giving public colleges an "out" that he will surely cite later as he moves forward with his plans for a board of regents system of higher education governance. It's an idea that hasn't been well-received among reluctant self-directed boards of trustees.

Sanford has ample standing to push for better governance. He is correct that higher education is overbuilt. There is widespread agreement that the Commission on Higher Education and its system of performance funding is broken and incapable of giving schools the freedom and adequate resources they need to succeed. Neither the commission nor performance funding has been effective at limiting duplication or ensuring efficient spending of a limited education dollar in South Carolina.

The state will probably have to find some compromise between a board of regents proposal and the failed breakaway bill, which gave research institutions urgently needed autonomy from onerous state regulations.

But it's clear that privatization is not a workable strategy. And targeting these 13 institutions fails to recognize that much of the overbuilding Sanford has railed against exists among the two-year and technical colleges.

A month ago, Sanford was in Greenville trumpeting the partnership between Greenville, Clemson and the Upstate automotive industry for breaking ground on the first of what is hoped to be more economic clustering. State dollars invested over more than 100 years brought Clemson, the catalyst for this enterprise, to this point. So it makes little sense to abandon this state's investment in institutions like Clemson, disrupt their place in our economy or undermine their quality by depriving them of funding. We can adopt smarter reform than this.