EDITORIAL: Education is best weapon against poverty

The Pee Dee suffers with unrelenting poverty. The problem leads to other social ills, including illiteracy, hunger, crime and a reliance on public assistance.

There is only one way to break the cycle of poverty. Young men and women need to attend college or vocational school and earn a degree.

Experts agree it’s the most realistic solution for impoverished people to compete for high-paying jobs and establish a foundation for success.

The State of South Carolina has a moral obligation, in our opinion, to support higher education and to keep the cost of a college education affordable. If we dream of a Pee Dee with economic prosperity and more jobs, the process of defeating poverty must come with a commitment to training and education.

Our concern for higher education comes as the state wrestles with its latest budget headache. The State Budget and Control Board is expected to recommend another across-the-board cut of state agencies later this month, marking the third reduction since June for colleges and universities. That likely means higher costs for anyone attending college.

We have a better idea: exempt colleges and universities from the latest round of cuts because their missions will be compromised with more slicing and dicing.

Spending on higher education, which has dipped to $577 million from an all-time high of $781 million in 2001, would be reduced to levels from 15 years ago with a mandated, 3-percent cut.

“I’m a fiscal conservative and a cost-cutter,” state Rep. Chip Limehouse, R-Charleston and chairman of the higher education subcommittee, told The State in Columbia. “But we stopped cutting fat long ago. We’re now down to the muscle and the bone.”

The influx of federal stimulus money has spared higher education to a certain extent. By accepting the money, lawmakers cannot cut higher education by a larger percentage than the state budget itself.

Fortunately, colleges and universities have the ability to forecast revenue dips. Because South Carolina relies on a series of rolling revenue estimates for budgeting purposes, colleges and universities have been able to fight off any drastic changes, including layoffs, furloughs and increased class sizes.

In 2008-2009, South Carolina endured the worst cuts to higher education in the nation. Funding was down 17.7 percent compared with the previous fiscal year.

“I met with state leaders to make clear the sacrifices that our university has shouldered to contribute to South Carolina’s recovery and to ask them to work for the future restoration of our funding,”

University of South Carolina President Harris Pastides said in written remarks to his staff in February. “We have eliminated some 300 faculty and staff positions, imposed tight restrictions on hiring and travel, embarked on an aggressive conservation program for fuel, electricity, and supplies, and postponed the implementation of a much-needed data management system upgrade for the university.”

Those tough measures came before USC and other universities, such as Francis Marion in Florence, were asked to tighten their belts even more. FMU was forced to increase tuition, an unfortunate impediment to poor students receiving a college degree.

The fiscal decisions facing South Carolina are tough. The state needs to keep repairing and building roads. The corrections department has been cut to the bone. Elementary and secondary education affects more students, and the facilities are crumbling.

In the long run, though, higher education is the key to prosperity in South Carolina. College graduates become future high-wage earners and help drive the economic engine in the state.

The affordability of a college degree is of vital importance in the Pee Dee. Our future depends on it.

— Unsigned editorials represent the views of this newspaper. Editorial Board members are Mark Laskowski (regional publisher), James Bennett (regional editor), Sam Bundy (sports editor), Kimberly Ginfrida (news editor), David Johnson (regional circulation director), Charles Tomlinson (Lake City News & Post editor) and Jackie Torok (metro editor).