Tuition is going through the roof, and yet colleges are forging ahead with ambitious building plans. The University of South Carolina is working to double the size of its medical school, with no regard for the objections of the state’s premier medical school, the Medical University of South Carolina. S.C. State is struggling to explain why it hasn’t been able to get an $80 million transportation program off the ground after 12 years, and how to account for the money, while its bickering board of trustees runs a revolving door for presidents.

The common thread isn’t runaway spending, as some suggest, but rather the lack of any sort of oversight beyond the colleges’ boards of trustees, whose focus is solely on their individual institutions, and who act too often more as cheerleaders (or, in the case of S.C. State, wrecking crews) than as regulators.

The result is that we have a public college system that isn’t a system at all. Each college is an island unto itself, cooperating and coordinating with other colleges when that suits its needs, going it alone when that suits its desires. Unfortunately, the proposal Gov. Mark Sanford recently trotted back out — placing a moratorium on construction by colleges — won’t even solve the tuition problem, much less the overarching problem of lack of coordination and prioritization. ...

A board of regents is not a silver bullet. Its members likely would reflect the parochialism that makes it impossible for the Legislature to make smart decisions about colleges. And it would face the constant threat of the Legislature overruling its smart decisions.

But the fact is that we can’t improve our lot unless we try to improve our lot. ... And there’s plenty to suggest that it could herd a collection of public colleges and universities into a coherent system that capitalizes on each institution’s strengths while working together toward the shared goal of preparing students to be productive adults who help make South Carolina the state we all want it to be.

The (Columbia) State