South Carolina wastes money on higher education

e-mail this story discuss this issue in our forums Guest column • Cort Flint: County Council needs to pitch in on local projects (04/11/04) • Gary B. Melton: Communities must resolve to keep our children safe (04/11/04) • Thomas Ravenel: Here's how to cut $200 billion in federal spending (04/09/04) • Paul A. Barra: Vouchers will save good students from bad schools (04/07/04) • George Fletcher: Let's support the Braves in their last season here (04/06/04) More details State Rep. Harry C. Stille, R-Due West, is a businessman and retired professor and coach who represents District 11, which includes parts of Abbeville and Anderson counties. He has served in the House since 1993, serves on the Education & Public Works Committee and can be reached at HCS@scstatehouse.net.

Many state employees have suffered with job loss, restricted incomes and a hiring freeze.

At the state's four-year public universities things are very different. Life goes on like very little happened to the state's economy.

University administrations sell the public how bad things are because of reductions in their share of state budget with cutbacks they have to make.

However, in the real world, most universities have more in total funding than they had years ago.

According to figures in Gov. Mark Sanford's Executive Budget, the 12 universities, MUSC and technical colleges have increased their total funds by $227.6 million over the past four years. The majority of this comes from tuition, books, student fees and dorm increases and is related to the change increase in lottery funding of the Life Scholarships.

From last year (2002-03) to this year (2003-04), the increase was over $120 million. Yet, the institutions continue to want more funds from the students by increasing tuition again for next year. They want a 6 to 7 percent increase for 2004-05. These same institutions awarded 5,800 employees pay increases this year as well.

All institutions' tuition will exceed the Life Scholarship awards of $5,000. Students and parents must pay out-of-pocket costs of tuition in excess of the Life awards or those without Life.

The major problem with the senior four-year public university systems in South Carolina is the Legislature condones mediocrity. To increase student enrollment, institutions accept weaker academically prepared students for the money. The good academically prepared student is already in college.

Our senior four-year universities are the most wasteful agency in our state's government. They talk the good game of efficiency with no regard to the taxpayer or student.

Fifteen percent of all freshmen that enter most of our institutions should not be in the public four-year system to begin their college careers. Of these freshman students, 2,200 in Fall 2003 scored below 899/19 on SAT/ACT tests when the state cohort freshman average is 1082/24.5 for SAT/ACT. This group of underqualified students cost in facilities, faculty, staff and administration and can be educated at about 60 percent of the cost in the technical education system.

Many poorly prepared students can also remain in college because grades are much inflated for many reasons.

Clemson University and the College of Charleston have been reducing the number of freshmen to increase the academic quality of the freshman class. This concept works as test scores and GPA class rank reflect in the data.

The Citadel's freshman academic quality is not as good as the above two institutions, but because of the mission of the institution, they have very positive results to show for these students.

The University of South Carolina needs a serious overhaul of its academic performance. USC-Columbia should follow the Clemson admissions model, but the administration is more concerned with numbers than quality of student.

Our research institutions tend to neglect the undergraduate student for focus on research. However, for research to be in the forefront, a higher quality undergraduate needs to be the future graduate student doing the research.

The other institutions must restrict the freshman class to improve the academic quality of these freshman students. This saves the state money. The students at these institutions fail to retain or graduate anywhere from 40-61 percent of their freshman students. This is an enormous cost to our state's taxpayers to fund these students.

Our state spends too much money on weak academically prepared students who take away from the good students and their programs within the four-year system.

What's wrong with a weaker academically prepared students beginning their college in the two-year system, then transferring to a four-year institution to complete their baccalaureate degree?

For a small state, we need to be more efficient with our higher education dollars.

USC-Beaufort and USC-Sumter should be forced to remain two-year status institutions. The academic quality of student is not present to merit four-year status. As a two-year college, only 24-30 percent of these institutions' entering freshmen graduate with a baccalaureate degree. Thirty-four percent of freshman at Beaufort and Sumter score below 899 on the combined SAT test.

Some of our four-year institutions may need to become two-year institutions because of their large number of weak academically prepared students.

Our state needs a governing board over the post-secondary system to better manage the higher education system.