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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE<\/span><\/p>\n Contact: Ben Fox <\/span>803-734-2100<\/span><\/p>\n Columbia, S.C. – September 14, 2010 – Leading up to the statewide Higher Education Summit planned for the end of September, the Governor has committed to helping clear away several misperceptions about higher education, student body composition, and college affordability. Exposing these popular misconceptions is necessary as the House, Senate and Executive Branch come together next year to address recent burdensome tuition hikes and explore ways to better protect the taxpayer while keeping the dream of college within reach for hard-working South Carolina families. The first of these myths is as follows:<\/span><\/p>\n MYTH #1: If you build it, they will come\u2026<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n \u201cSome have argued that the <\/span>South Carolina higher ed system must continue its recent building boom \u2013 more than one billion dollars over the last four years according to the Greenville News<\/em> \u2013 because every other state and institution across the nation is doing it,\u201d Gov. Sanford said. \u201cFor our state\u2019s colleges and universities to remain competitive, so the argument goes, pricey capital projects are necessary even in economic downturns.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFirst, the idea that \u2018everybody\u2019s doing it\u2019 is simply not true. Since the economic downturn began, 43 states \u2013 including South Carolina \u2013 have reduced their higher education funding levels. Yet unlike South Carolina, many states and universities have decided to suspend new building projects until the economy recovers. <\/span>Last year, for instance, Democratic Governor Jay Nixon of Missouri suspended public university capital projects totaling $150 million \u2013 including a $31 million cancer center at the University of Missouri\u2019s main campus \u2013 because of his state\u2019s uncertain economic future. Also in 2009, the California State University system suspended $600 million in capital projects on all of the system\u2019s 23 campuses. As well, both Texas A&M and the University of Texas at Austin have deferred various capital projects in FY 2010-11 as the economy struggles to catch hold. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSecond, it\u2019s not only public universities that see the wisdom in delaying capital projects. As the economy worsened during the last couple of years, some of the nation\u2019s premier private universities \u2013 Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, among others \u2013 have postponed capital projects worth billions of dollars. Last year Harvard suspended construction on a $1 billion science complex in response to the poor economic conditions. Keep in mind that Harvard\u2019s endowment was worth $26.9 billion in 2009, representing more than five times the size of South Carolina\u2019s current general fund budget. Similarly, Yale announced that it would freeze up to $2 billion in capital projects \u2018until conditions in credit markets improve,\u2019 even with an endowment that\u2019s more than three times South Carolina\u2019s current general funds budget. Princeton, whose endowment of $12.6 billion is the fourth largest in the U.S., reduced its capital plans by $300 million. If institutions with endowments larger than our entire state budget are delaying capital projects in an effort to save money, it makes sense for South Carolina to do the same.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThird and finally, while we understand the appeal that new buildings hold for administrators and potential students, we\u2019d concur with Senator Hugh Leatherman\u2019s concerns about higher ed\u2019s rising tuition rates that have made our state\u2019s average college tuition rate the highest in the entire Southeast. We also continue to believe that postponing new construction projects will best protect students and their tax-paying parents who have shouldered the burden of enormous tuition and fee increases over the last decade.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n ###<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Ben Fox 803-734-2100 Columbia, S.C. – September 14, 2010 – Leading up to the statewide Higher Education Summit planned for the end of September, the Governor has committed to helping clear away several misperceptions about higher education, student body composition, and college affordability. Exposing these popular misconceptions is necessary as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2gEQ0-11m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}