There have been a number of newspaper articles lately talking about rising tuition and fee increases at our state’s public colleges and universities. Not surprisingly, a chorus of chatter from politicians promising to limit these increases has followed.

Unfortunately, while the calls for reform are indeed strong in these articles, the willingness of the General Assembly in recent years to implement reform has been lacking — despite receiving a clear road map on how to do so from Gov. Mark Sanford.

Currently, South Carolina has the second-highest tuition and fee costs in the entire nation compared to per capita income. Only Vermont’s is higher. We spend 17 percent of our overall state budget on higher education compared to the national average of 10.5 percent. For a comparatively poor state like ours, this is both tragic and unsustainable.

Our state college and university system is the most wasteful, duplicative part of state government. Yet neither legislators nor members of boards of trustees at these institutions seem to care about passing the cost of that waste and duplication on to the students and their parents. We have 33 state-supported colleges and universities at more than 80 campus locations, far too many for a state our size. We have far too many four-year institutions, given that 15 percent to 20 percent of undergraduate students at these institutions need to begin their study in the two-year system. All this drives the costs up for everyone.

From school year 2000-2001 to the present, tuition at Clemson has risen by 146 percent, at USC-Columbia by 89 percent, Coastal Carolina by 97 percent, at The Citadel by 92 percent, at Francis Marion by 66 percent, at S.C. State by 74 percent and at Winthrop by 105 percent. Of course, the explanation for these exorbitant increases is always “budget cuts.”

Yet, according to Budget and Control Board documents, total state funding of colleges and universities has not declined by nearly the amount the institutions suggest. As funding in the budget has been lowered because of reduced revenue, lottery, auxiliary enterprises, deferred maintenance and building bonding funds have made up revenues to cover costs.

Speaker Bobby Harrell, who is now evidencing concern for these tuition increases, certainly did not ever have this issue on his agenda as chair of the Ways and Means Committee.

By contrast, Gov. Sanford’s executive budget for the past two years has included a proviso that would cap tuition increases at $250 above the Higher Education Price Index, which this year was 4.6 percent. Unfortunately, this proviso was not part of the House or Senate budget.

Every year for a decade in the House budget deliberations, I tried to cap tuition increases. Mr. Harrell never supported any of these proposals because he had his own agenda for higher education — give them all they ask for, one way or the other.

When the South Carolina economy went south and there were fewer budget dollars to spend, Mr. Harrell as chairman of Ways and Means funneled money to the institutions through the lottery. One way he did this was by lowering the standards for the LIFE Scholarships ofa “B” average and 1,100 on the SAT by adding the top 30 percent of high school class rank to the criteria.

Later, he promoted the “two of three standards” concept, which lowered the LIFE criteria even further by letting students drop one of these three requirements. As a result, 43 percent of students fail to choose the SAT/ACT test score option to get a LIFE scholarship.

What this did was to channel more funds to the institutions through freshman enrollments (where 50 percent fail to retain their scholarships), and institutions enroll new freshmen the next year to keep the money flowing. Those students who lose the scholarship tend to stay in school, but they are forced to borrow to make the tuition payments. Either way, the institutions win.

I am not sure from what motivation Mr. Harrell is now speaking — but it sure seems political to me. Now he can justify fully funding the higher education system as he did our K-12 system, with the funds there, but with a continuing lack of any accountability.

Mr. Stille of Due West is a retired Erskine College professor and former member of the S.C. House.