By Bill Rauch
The all-powerful South Carolina Commission on Higher Education (CHE) has not always been a big fan of the Beaufort campus of the University of South Carolina. In the pivotal 1970s and ‘80s, for example, the Commission blocked the college from expanding across Carteret Street, thus weirdly and unnecessarily stunting the college’s growth.
It was in neither the college’s nor the city’s interests that during those years CHE effectively forced the college to grow only in the direction of Beaufort’s most expensive and architecturally protected neighborhood, the Point. The Commission’s weird anti-expansion directive in those decades wasn’t even because the system was short on cash. During the same years, Columbia was writing big checks to the Beaufort campus of the Technical College of the Lowcountry, which was, of course, good for the city.
For those who may wonder, institutions of learning bring to cities the attractive qualities of vibrancy and youth. Their presence is always touted by economic development promoters.
Just a little history lesson.
Now the city faces another challenge from CHE. As a residual effect of the COVID pandemic, in the most recent cycle — the way CHE works the numbers – only 7.2 history majors were graduated from The University of South Carolina Beaufort (USCB). That matters because the Commission has promulgated a rule that says the colleges within their system must graduate at least eight history majors per cycle, or else CHE will eliminate history as a major available at that college.
The Commission, using a system it calls its Program Productivity Analysis (PPA), considers a cycle to be a four-year period. The current cycle, in which USCB has fallen below the PPA’s threshold, is 2022 through 2026.
It is unmistakable that the 7.2 number is a COVID-related anomaly because enrollment at USCB, just like enrollment at all the other colleges and universities in the nation, was dramatically down during the pandemic. Moreover, in the upcoming years the number of history majors expected to graduate from USCB, according to USCB’s academic enrollment data, will pop back up to be once again comfortably above the CHE’s magic eight number.
Considered as both a revenue and a cultural impact, removing history as a major at USCB will be harmful to the City of Beaufort because, if it happens, the result will be that there will be fewer serious historians here interpreting Beaufort’s history. With the military, hospitality and eco-tourism, history is one of Beaufort’s key industries. That is for a very good reason. As Lawrence Rowland, the lead author of the book on Beaufort’s history, says, “All of American history actually began in Beaufort, South Carolina.”
Our nation, our state, and our city need more historians studying here, not fewer.
There is another more parochial but equally serious consideration. USCB has recently attracted some first-rate scholars to teach here. For example, Molly Barnes, who teaches rhetoric at USCB, just published her very important “Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838-1902.”
And James Shinn, Jr., who teaches history here, is working on another important book, one that will focus on parallel currents between the Reconstruction period in the U.S. and the makings of the Ten Years’ War against the Spanish in Cuba that finally led in 1886 to the abolition of slavery on the island. What is the message that discontinuing history as a major at USCB will send to these and to the other important scholars here?
Finally, how does it make sense for the Commission to hold 2,000-student USCB to the same eight-graduates-per-cycle standard as, for example, Clemson whose undergraduate population is 12 times larger than USCB’s? How is that fair to all the state’s smaller colleges? Mightn’t a percentage of the whole calculation be a more sensible measure?
It’s time to get real here. The South Carolina Commission on Higher Education should take the long view and waive their 8.0 rule for USCB’s history department, pending a look at likely out year growth in the major of history at the college.
And, while they are at it, they should throw their discriminatory PPA universal measure system out the window and move to a more commonsense percentage of the whole system for measuring the efficacy of the respective academic majors at the colleges in their system.
Bill Rauch was the Mayor of Beaufort from 1999 to 2008 and has won multiple awards from the S.C. Press Association for his Island News columns. He can be reached at TheRauchReport@gmail.com.