South Carolina senator Vincent Sheheen did not make the cut as his state’s flagship university mulls who is to become become its next president.
Sheheen’s name was not on a list of four finalists for the presidency of the University of South Carolina – a school which has remained stagnant in the national rankings for decades despite astronomical increases in tuition costs and higher education debt.
Such is the legacy of its outgoing president, Harris Pastides.
Also absent from the school’s list of finalists? White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, whose name was in the mix for the job late last year prior to U.S. president Donald Trump tapping him as his top aide.
Who is on the list?
According to reporter Lucas Daprile of The (Columbia, S.C.) State newspaper, four academics: John S. Applegate, a professor and executive vice president in the Indiana University System; Robert L. Caslen Jr., a top aide to the president of the University of Central Florida; William F. Tate, vice provost for graduate education at St. Louis Washington University; and Joseph T. Walsh Jr., vice president for research at Northwestern University in Chicago.
[su_dominion_video_scb]Whoever gets the job obviously has their work cut out for them …
Relations between the school and the Palmetto State’s all-powerful legislature is at a low point – and the recent appointment of a liberal politician to a high-paying job on campus has not helped matters.
Nor has the outgoing president’s next payday …
Nor has the fact that the school’s once high-flying athletic teams have seen their fortunes fall off precipitously in the last half-decade.
Our view? USC probably made the right move by leaving Sheheen off of its list – as his selection would have been rightfully perceived as more insider cronyism. Which it would have been.
Who runs the school is not the problem, though …
What is? Soaring tuition increases, skyrocketing debt, rabid political correctness and out-of-control spending on spectacularly failed “economic development” schemes.
“Choosing the next president of this institution is not the real issue as far as we are concerned,” we wrote two months ago in assessing Sheheen’s bid. “It matters, but at the end of the day the real issue is convincing South Carolina’s leaders that the subsidization of a bloated, inefficient and increasingly ineffective network of higher education institutions is not something taxpayers should be subjected to any longer.”
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