USC enrolls a record number of SC students. Why doesn’t it feel that way?
Some South Carolinians feel that the state’s public universities aren’t taking care of their in-state students. But that isn’t the case.
State Rep. Nathan Ballentine, R-Richland, asked University of South Carolina President Michael Amiridis to clear up that misconception at a meeting of the Ways and Means Higher Education Subcommittee on Jan. 29, where USC presented its budget requests for the next fiscal year.
“This story that we are letting the students out is not true,” Amiridis said.
This year, the school received more than 60,000 applications during the latest admissions cycle. About 15,000 of which came from in-state residents. Of the 15,000 South Carolina applications received, 75% were directly admitted, Amiridis said. Another 15%, students who the university believes will struggle their first year at USC, are given the opportunity to participate in a bridge program to later transfer in, through a technical college or one of USC’s two-year campuses.
Only 10% of South Carolina applicants are flat-out denied admission.
“Students that we believe would have a hard time, they would not able to continue, and we are just getting money from them,” Amiridis said.
The rest of the system is almost exclusively in-state students, Amiridis said.
Enrollment at the University of South Carolina in Columbia surpassed 40,000 students last fall, and welcomed the largest-ever freshman class of more than 7,800 students.
About 56.3% of the current student body is from the Palmetto State, according to the Office of Institutional Research, Assessment and Analytics, with each county represented. In the last decade, that figure has stayed relatively the same, though it is down slightly from 61.8% in the fall of 2013. Still, the university was enrolling about 10,000 fewer students back then.
USC received 10,000 applications annually about a decade ago. Twice as many South Carolina students were offered a spot at the Columbia campus last year compared to back then, officials said.
Scott Verzyl, USC’s vice president of enrollment, said there are a record number of South Carolinians among the undergraduate class right now.
“Why is there this public misperception?” Verzyl told The State. “It’s a bit befuddling.”
Even if a South Carolinian is admitted, it doesn’t mean they’ll attend. Academic programs, peer influence, wanting to leave home and financial aid are all factors in that decision, Verzyl said.
“We give preference to in state students,” Verzyl said. “We give a significant amount of preference to in state students.”
Only about half of out-of-state students that apply are admitted, Verzyl said, and that number is going down.
“What we do is we admit all qualified South Carolina residents that apply,” Verzyl said. “We take as many out of state students as we can to meet our overall enrollment goal.”
