By Robert Kittle
South Carolina State University found out Thursday it gets to keep its accreditation, but will remain on probation for up to another year as it deals with financial problems. Losing accreditation would have essentially closed the school, since students cannot get federal financial aid to go to a school that’s not accredited.
“SC State University is open for business and we are here to stay,” said acting president Dr. W. Franklin Evans. The school was already on probation for non-compliance on governance and financial issues.
The school’s financial problems go back years, blamed on mismanagement, falling enrollment and less state funding. James E. Clark, vice chairman of the Board of Trustees, said the problems and probation caused enrollment to fall even more, making the situation worse. “Yes, it has had some effect, but that’s in the past,” he said Thursday. “We’re looking forward to the things that we are doing in a most positive way to make this an even more exciting place for the students to come.”
Sophomore De’Von Williams, from Latta, said he wasn’t concerned about the future of the school when he first started there, but as problems mounted, “I worried, because this is the only place I want to go in South Carolina. At all,” he says.
Now that the school has kept its accreditation, “I am excited, so excited that I can stay here all four years of my college career and graduate,” he says.
Last December, the board asked lawmakers for a loan of $12 million to pay down its deficit. Then-President Thomas Elzey said the school owed vendors, like the company that runs the school’s cafeteria, about $7 million.
The Board of Trustees fired Elzey in March, and then state lawmakers passed a bill that Gov. Nikki Haley signed in May to fire the entire board.
Acting president Dr. Evans says the school will make the cuts and down-sizing it needs to in order to compensate for declining enrollment and decreasing state funds. “We’re going to be paying as we go. We had a large vendor debt. We recognize that we can’t do that, that if we want something we have to make sure we have the funds to get it,” he says.
And he says the administration realizes it can’t rely on the state to bring the school out of its financial problems, so it began a three-year campaign to raise donations from alumni.
