A South Carolina State University student walks outside the school’s new engineering building Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. The building is a research hub on the campus of the state’s only public historcally Black university. The school has earned the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education’s second highest research designation. (Photo by Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
ORANGEBURG — A research designation boost for South Carolina State University emphasizes how far the school has climbed from a decade ago, when falling enrollment and mounting debt threated its closure.
The state’s only public historically Black university announced Tuesday that it had achieved the second-highest level of research under the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education’s ranking system.
“This is a defining moment in our university’s history, one that reflects our steadfast commitment to academic excellence, innovation and impactful research,” said President Alexander Conyers.
To reach that status, the university has to spend at least $5 million on research and award at least 20 doctoral degrees a year.
By comparison, the state’s top-tier research schools — University of South Carolina, Clemson University and the Medical University of South Carolina — spend at least $50 million on research and development and award 70 or more research doctorates each year.
SC State becomes the only college in South Carolina in the next tier.
When Conyers spoke to S.C. State’s governing board last year about pursuing the designation, he told board members corporations often seek historically Black colleges and universities as partners for federal grants. Having a higher research status makes the university even more competitive for those opportunities, The Orangeburg Times and Democrat reported.
“Going forward, this designation will, I believe, give us a much greater opportunity for additional resources and funding,” Conyers told reporters Tuesday. “This is going to give us an opportunity to elevate on all levels.”
The Orangeburg university has one doctoral program — in education — which prepares students for jobs as school district superintendents, curriculum developers and other educational management and policy-making positions.
The university has considered adding more doctoral programs, said spokesman Sam Watson. That could include the areas where the university already offers master’s degrees.
SC State student and faculty research areas also include transportation, energy, agriculture, cyber security and cancer prevention.
Victoria Jordan, a senior from Fort Mill, has worked along researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina to study precursors of pancreatic cancer in an effort to catch the disease before it progresses. She’s also studied oral cancers and after graduation she plans to continue her education and pursue a career as a dentist.
The college’s industry partners include IBM, Duke Energy, BMW and Savannah River National Laboratory.
SC State’s partnership with the federal nuclear laboratory, as well as USC and Clemson — known as the Battelle Alliance — was among the efforts Conyers highlighted in his announcement. To help produce the workforce needed at the national lab, SC State started a fire protection engineering degree and a cyber security degree to its list of offerings.
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‘On the move’
The new research designation marks a major comeback for the university that a decade ago was on the brink of losing its accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges.
The accrediting agency put SC State on warning in 2013, followed by probation a year later after school officials failed to cut spending despite years of declining enrollment. The commission’s next step, revoking accreditation, would have ended students’ ability to qualify for federal financial aid — which would’ve been a death knell for the school.
In 2015, lawmakers took drastic steps to keep the school open. Those included approving a $19 million bailout, firing SC State’s entire governing board and appointing temporary members to cut spending and return the school to solvency. Hundreds of jobs were eliminated.
In 2016, after the Legislature forgave all but $6 million of the debt, the school’s accreditation was fully restored.
While the school largely had moved past its fiscal mess by 2021, enrollment still lagged. The board fired the previous president and installed Conyers to turn that trend around. The university now has about 3,000 students, up from about 2,100 students when Conyers came to the helm.
As the university continues to improve, House budget writers are seeking to forgive the school’s remaining $2 million debt to the state.
“They certainly have gotten their act together,” Rep. Bill Taylor, R-Aiken, said last week as the House Ways and Means Committee adopted its spending plan.
The school could’ve already paid the debt in full if it had as many alumni and deep donor pockets as USC and Clemson. Removing that cloud is the right thing to do, he said.
“South Carolina State University is on the move,” Conyers said Tuesday.
Revenues at the college were up 17% to nearly $30 million at the start of last school year.
And this fall, the school actually enrolled more than 3,300 students but had to turn hundreds away due to a campus housing crunch, Watson said.
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SC State has more than $18 million worth of housing projects under construction — two dorm remodels that will add nearly 300 bed spaces when complete — in an effort to remedy that. Watson said the school also hopes to use bonds to finance a new 500-bed facility to allow for future growth.
Finally, Watson said, private developers are considering building a pair of apartment complexes near the campus. And the city of Orangeburg has started a major redevelopment project, known as Railroad Corner. The project is being built using nearly $30 million in federal funds and will include housing space for 200 students that the college will lease from the city.
Watson said the school leadership estimates they could regrow enrollment to 5,000 students by 2028, a student number the school has not seen since before the Great Recession.