By Jessica Holdman
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — The head of South Carolina’s higher education agency announced his retirement a month after an audit found the agency allowed $152 million in unspent state lottery profits intended for college scholarships to pile up over six years.
Rusty Monhollon, executive director of the state Commission on Higher Education, will retire in March. He has led the agency since 2019.
“I know there’s more to do and more I want to do, but I think it’s the right time,” Monhollon said in a statement. “This is the best job I’ve ever had and has been the culmination of my professional career.”
Monhollon came to South Carolina from Missouri to bring stability to the agency that had a revolving door of leadership over several years.
“Dr. Monhollon’s retirement from the CHE is a huge loss for higher education in South Carolina. He has done an outstanding job in restoring confidence in the agency,” said former Sen. Wes Hayes, chairman of the Commission on Higher Education’s governing board. “Our work will continue but we will miss his leadership.”
But Monhollon will leave the leave the agency with a mark on his record after state Inspector General Brian Lamkin reported the agency “wasted” opportunities for students by letting $152 million in lottery scholarship money sit in the bank, which he said lawmakers could have spent to help more students.
Voters approved the lottery in 2000 as a way to fund college scholarships and make a degree affordable for South Carolina students, who can put it toward costs at the private or public college of their choice.
While the money sat untouched, no eligible student was denied scholarship funding, Monhollon said. The error was in predicting how much was needed to fully cover the state’s three largest scholarship programs.
In Monhollon’s retirement announcement, the agency instead highlighted accomplishments.
Those include the start of a program to encourage veteran nurses to become educators of future nurses, an event celebrating graduating high school seniors at the Statehouse called “College and Career Decision Day,” efforts to ensure credit for classes taken at one college in the state transfer seamlessly to another and leading the agency through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jessica Holdman writes about the economy, workforce and higher education. Before joining the S.C. Daily Gazette, she was a business reporter for The Post and Courier.
