Colleges deserve more state funding

The Greenville Journal
December 19, 2008

Colleges deserve more state funding

In the rosy world of campaign promises, one that pleased the masses was our new president-elect's vow to make college more affordable for America's young people.

As with more campaign promises, Barack Obama may find this one much easier to pledge than to provide.

A new report from a national commission sounds two warnings on this issue that belog in the not-to-be-ignored category: higher education is progressively more unaffordable for middle and working class Americans - and this, in turn, is eroding America's economic competitiveness on the international stage.

The warnings come at fire-siren decibels for South Carolina, which earned an "F" for college affordability in last week's report by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

The center found that South Carolina's poor and working-class families are shelling out 34 percent of their incomes - after financial aid - to pay tuition and other costs at four-year colleges and universities.

This is in a state where average college tuition costs rank among the top 10 highest in the country. More ominously, the state seriously lags the rest of the nation in the percentage of adult who have any kind of college degree.

A 2007 report by the Lumina Foundation for Education found that only 39 percent of the state's white population holds an associate's degree or higfher, compared to 48 perecent of Asians, 21 percent of blacks and 15 percent of Hispanics.

The appalling deficit comes at a time when national economist predict high-skill jobs that require advanced education will amount to almost half of all job growth in the United State. If South Carolina has any hope of planting some of those new jobs here, the state must find a way - and the will - to get more South Carolinians out of high school and into college.

The current economic criss cannot be an excuse to do otherwise - or it will be years before South Carolina climbs out of the hole our elected leaders' mismanagement has already dug for us.

State economists say the Legislature's drastic budget cuts of recent weeks were the end result of that audust body's irresponsible tax cuts and reforms of 2006 - not the national recession. That body blow is still to come - as are more budget cuts, and considerably more pain as those cuts translate into drastically less money for schools, prisons, highway patrol, Medicaid, mental health, and the list goes on.

The Legislature created their mess with its "party-on" attitude while times were good. Now its time for the grownups to torch the party hats and get serious about setting realistic priorities and a long-term vision for our state.

That vision must include a serious investment in higher education - not just for the good of individuals, but for the enduring health of this state. We should all hope Clemson University President Jim Barker was wrong in the concern he voiced a few weeks back that "higher education has shifted from being a public good to a private investment" in the state leadership's view.

If he's right, South Carolina will trail the nation and the industrialized world for years to come. Lawmakers can't use lottey scholarships for bright kids as an excuse for slashing public support for higher education. Many average students can handle college if they can just get there - and soaring tuitions are keeping them out.

Meanwhile, the future of this state depends in great part on whether just such students find good jobs and become productive members of our society.