Query from Governor Sanford: How do we affordably improve higher education?
Submitted by: John Warner on Jan 21, 2007 at 3:26 am
Tagged with: Academia, Featured Articles
Source:
In a letter posted on his website (PDF), Governor Sanford highlights concerns he has about the higher education system in South Carolina and requests input.
I would be curious to hear of any other ideas you might have that you think would help affect the cost of higher education in South Carolina, or ways to better coordinate its delivery.
We can't address cost alone to get at the critical role of higher education in the state's economy. We must expand the question to include another essential element. How do we affect the cost of higher education, better coordinate its delivery, and at the same time build world-class research universities providing the best-in-the-world talent required to drive South Carolina's economy?
The solution the Governor proposes is tuition caps:
One of the greatest challenges we face in South Carolina is the large number of higher education institutions, which consume dollars that should go directly to benefit the student... Our proposal is... creating a better functioning higher education system for the students and taxpayers of this state. We think caps could move us, at a minimum, forward on more collaboration in higher education and ideally in the direction of restructuring the higher education system, either through strengthening the Commission on Higher Education or even a Board of Regents, which we view as the long-term solution. In the short term, tuition caps are also a tool to mitigate the burden that these increases are placing on students and families. These increases, unfortunately, are largely a result of duplication and inefficiency within the higher educational system.
At the same time we have to be concerned about higher education remaining affordable, we must continue to build world-class research universities in South Carolina. While it is true that we have had tuition increases that are higher than North Carolina and Georgia in recent years, it is also true that our research universities are coming from much further behind in the pack and it takes money to catch up. Others are not standing still while we're running harder. The market of students attending South Carolina universities is endorsing efforts to improve the quality of higher education. In spite of higher tuition, applications and the quality of students being admitted, as reflected by rising SATs scores, are up significantly at Clemson and USC.
So what do you think? How does South Carolina make sure higher education remains affordable while continuing to invest in world-class research universities to drive our economy?
We'll summarize the suggestions we receive here next week as well as highlighting them on the Monday morning Swamp Fox update on the South Carolina Business Review with Mike Switzer on January 28, 2007.