“Higher Education Officials Push Education Action Plan”
Dec. 8, 2009: For South Carolina to get out of the cellar on a number of generational problems – low education levels, poverty, high unemployment and more – its leaders need to make a sustained commitment to improving higher education according to two state leaders who spoke to the club today.
Dr. Garrison Walters, executive director of the state Commission on Higher Education, told members South Carolina was far behind in focusing on the growing knowledge economy. “We have a lack of public priority focus and a lack of public focus on higher education.” he said. “Our state is far behind economically and we’re not catching up.” For example, per capital income and the state’s rank in the number of people with bachelor’s degrees is about the same in 2006 as it was in 1990. Additionally, South Carolina’s public colleges and universities rank 15th out of 16 Southern states in the percent of their budgets that come from state sources. In the current state budget, funding was down $203 million from two years earlier to $555 million. Columbia attorney Ken Wingate, who chairs the Commission, said it has created an Action Plan to make higher education a public priority . Three goals include:
Raise education levels. About 22 percent of S.C. adults have at least a bachelor’s degree. The goal is to have 30 percent by 2030 – a so-called 30-by-30 goal.
Increase research and innovation. By creating new pathways to learning and technology, the state will create more of a culture of discovery, which should increase personal income.
Improve workforce training and educational services. Such a goal would align educational programs with important state clusters and connect adults with higher education in more flexible ways.
Wingate said several of the priority recommendations would cost little or no money: Enacting “regulatory relief” to allow colleges and universities to cut red tape from hiring, procurement and facility enhancement; and creating a cost reduction committee to promote and share best practices among institutions. Other measure would cost more, particularly increasing state funding and borrowing through the state’s bonding power. Instead of declining state support, colleges and universities “have got to find the political mettle to make higher education not only an add-on to the state budget but the key to economic prosperity.”
If higher education can become a state priority, a study shows individuals will earn twice as much over their lifetimes, generate almost 45,000 permanent jobs. “If people don’t believe education, including higher education, is important, we can’t possibly make the progress we need.”
Submitted by Andy Brack, Keyway Committee