The State editorial-posted on Friday, January 11, 2008
A NEW REPORT putting Clemson and USC in the top high-value colleges in the nation might come as a surprise to S.C. parents who are footing an increasingly high bill. But it provides some important perspective about the rising cost of a college education.
High quality isn’t cheap, but Kiplinger’s annual “Best Values in Public Colleges” list seeks to identify those schools that are “noteworthy for their combination of top-flight academics and affordable costs.” It considers test scores, student-faculty ratios, graduation rates, total cost before and after student aid and average debt at graduation.
The fact that Clemson came in 33rd out of 500 colleges reviewed and USC ranked 35th — up an impressive 16 points from last year — shows that our colleges are doing something right. (The College of Charleston also made the top 100 list, coming in at 70th.)
Unfortunately, those bragging rights apply mostly to the schools themselves, and not to our state for any particularly smart policy. That’s underlined by a trip across the border, where the University of North Carolina is once again ranked first, and the state’s other major university, N.C. State, ranked 13th.
Quality makes up two-thirds of the Kiplinger’s equation, and N.C. schools still have a huge leg up on our colleges. But what’s most instructive is how North Carolina’s top universities are able to provide such high quality while also keeping student costs down. The key lies in state policy: North Carolinians have long recognized is that it makes sense to make college as affordable as they possibly can for their students.
It’s not magic that keeps in-state tuition at UNC $2,000 below USC tuition; that is almost exactly how much more N.C. taxpayers spend per student than we do on public colleges. Some would have us believe that South Carolina spends too much on higher education; Gov. Mark Sanford complains that higher education funding makes up a larger portion of our state budget than it does in North Carolina, or in the nation. That’s the equivalent of saying someone who spends $2,000 of her $50,000 salary on gasoline is spending a larger portion than someone who spends $2,500 of his $100,000 salary. It’s true, but it doesn’t suggest that the first person is overspending.
To the extent that our lawmakers have been willing to spend additional money on higher education in recent years, they’ve been funneling it into academic scholarships, which are great for the students who earn them, but which do nothing to bring down the cost of college to all those students who don’t qualify, or don’t manage to keep the scholarships past the first semester.
There’s a place for academic scholarships in our higher education program. There’s a place for need-based scholarships — a much bigger place than our state has acknowledged. And there’s plenty of room to eliminate duplication and inefficiency and increase coordination in our higher education system.
But a system of public colleges has to be built on adequate funding from the state. That’s the only way you can provide the combination of high quality and affordable prices that we must provide if we hope to create the educated class that will power our economy. Our schools have demonstrated that they can do a respectable job of improving their academic quality. Imagine what better values they’d be if our Legislature funded them as well as the North Carolina colleges are funded, and put in place a centralized system of governance, as North Carolina has.
© 2008 TheState.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.thestate.com | 
