By Jessica Holdman
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — The head of South Carolina’s higher education agency left his post Friday, Jan. 13, more than a month ahead of schedule.
A week after announcing his plans to retire in March, Rusty Monhollon, executive director of the state Commission on Higher Education, pushed up his departure date. He has led the agency since 2019.
“I think this is in the best interest both for myself and for the commission,” Monhollon told the agency’s governing board Thursday.
Karen Woodfaulk, the agency’s student affairs division head, will serve as acting executive director until the board can bring someone on in the interim.
Former Sen. Wes Hayes, chairman of the commission’s governing board, said no legislator asked the board to dismiss Monhollon. However, blowback from the report put indirect pressure on the agency’s director.
“He just felt it would be difficult for the agency to move forward as long as he was here,” Hayes said of Monhollon’s early resignation.
Monhollon, whose salary is $248,100, submitted his resignation less than a week before the agency appears before House budget writers.
In December, South Carolina’s Inspector General Brian Lamkin reported the agency allowed $152 million in unspent state lottery profits intended for college scholarships to pile up over six years.
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.
The inspector general’s report drew the ire of several legislators who said the money could have been spent in other ways.
“Frankly, your report to us upsets me and I think it probably upsets a lot of people,” said Rep. Tim McGinnis, R-Myrtle Beach, on the day it was presented.
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.
