That, however, didn't stop him from proposing to trim their budgets.

Hoping to promote further cooperation between the state's three research institutions, Sanford proposed reducing their budgets by 1.5 percent for the fiscal 2004-05 budget, on top of other cuts he wants them to make in their phone and travel expenses.

The 1.5 percent cut would cost MUSC $1.2 million, Clemson $1.3 million and USC $2.2 million.

Sanford's proposal did not get a warm reception from the universities.

"I think we will end up collaborating -- to work against this proposal," said Russ McKinney, spokesman for USC.

"So much for doing the right thing," said Dr. Ray Greenberg, MUSC's president.

The three institutions have been increasingly focused in recent years on working together, especially in areas where their complementary specialties can help lure additional financing.

MUSC and USC have taken that togetherness a step further. Last year, the two institutions decided to hire a single dean to lead what will be a combined pharmacy school, with a single class entering school at one of the institutions in the fall of 2005.

The universities also plan to look at other areas of consolidation. Greenberg has indicated that the pharmacy merger could be a test of sorts. Their boards of trustees met in November to discuss the issue, and though they didn't discuss any specific areas other than the pharmacy school, officials have indicated that all departments are on the table.

Sanford apparently would like to see more of the same.

After applauding the pharmacy merger, Sanford noted in his budget proposal that with the 1.5 percent funding reduction, "(the universities) will have to build on these positive steps and look at other ways they can consolidate overlapping efforts. There are encouraging signs that they are continuing to do just that in regard to other areas of overlap -- such as the colleges of nursing and medicine."

The governor's budget plan noted additional areas of overlap: the MBA programs at Clemson and USC; the biomedical science master's programs at USC and MUSC; the animal physiology master's programs at Clemson and MUSC, and the public administration master's at Clemson and USC.

"Perhaps good and valid reasons exist for the duplication of these programs," Sanford wrote in his budget summary. "However, the default setting should not simply be acceptance of such duplication, and the burden should be on the institutions to justify the programs' separate existence and to explain why the state is not better off with the type of consolidation we recently witnessed when MUSC and USC proposed to merge their respective colleges of pharmacy."

Will Folks, Sanford's spokesman, said that the cuts proposed in the governor's spending blueprint are much lower than they have been in previous years. In this fiscal year, MUSC's budget was cut by $9 million, or about 10 percent from the previous year. The reduction proposed by Sanford for 2004-05 totals about $3 million for MUSC, a figure that includes the 1.5 percent cut along with reductions expected in travel and phone expenses.

Greenberg said the governor's budget implies that duplication is a big problem at the research institutions, when, instead, it's probably more of an issue at the state's four-year colleges and universities.

Greenberg also said duplication isn't necessarily wasteful. Having more of some programs can be good -- multiple nursing schools can educate more nurses, for instance, helping to address a critical nationwide nursing shortage.

"I don't know what the right number of nursing schools is, but we certainly don't need fewer nurses right now," Greenberg said.

Greenberg also believes the institutions already have plenty of incentive to work together to save money. "We're already motivated by the 30 percent cuts (seen in total over) the last three years," Greenberg said. "That's a far greater financial incentive than the additional one-and-a-half percent."

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