GREENWOOD - Because of massive shortfalls in the state budget, higher education funding throughout South Carolina was cut 17.4 percent earlier this year.

As a result, Piedmont Technical College's state funding has already been cut over $1.8 million dollars since March.

Although this first round of funding cuts was severe, Dr. Ray Brooks, president of Piedmont Technical College says that the second round could be catastrophic. An additional 15 percent cut is anticipated later this year, so PTC will be forced to cut even deeper to balance its budget.

As the largest provider of higher education in the Lakelands region of South Carolina, serving approximately 49 percent of all undergraduates currently enrolled in college within its seven county service area, Piedmont Technical College is the region's leader in work force training and economic development. Because of this extensive reach into the communities it serves, the collegeÕs response to the funding cuts will be widely felt throughout the region.

"The business community depends on us to provide qualified, highly-trained employees, and the work force in our area depends on us for training. WeÕre concerned that this funding cut may be the beginning of a downward spiral," said Brooks. "If we can't provide the services the community needs due to lack of state funding, it's going to exacerbate the already weak state of our local economy."

Brooks explained that healthcare is one of the fields that will be most affected.

While PTC provides training for approximately 80 percent of the nursing and healthcare workers in the area, it has become financially impossible for PTC to sustain its nursing programs at their current levels because of shortfalls in State funding for the Allied Health initiative.

The number of student slots available in PTC's programs has been reduced and enrollment has been capped at its current level. Brooks says that although he realizes this will cause difficulties for the quality of health care in the Lakelands region, it was unavoidable given the college's finances. He stresses that every effort will be made to mitigate the detrimental effects.

"We realize that the health care facilities in our area depend on us for their nursing staff. We'll be working diligently to ensure that we maintain and increase the high rate of student success weÕve established over the years," said Brooks.

Piedmont Technical College's administration has been anticipating this shortfall for months.

"We've seen this funding cut coming since March, and we've been preparing for this crisis since I began my tenure here earlier this year. But this is much bigger than we expected," Brooks said.

In addition to the usual responses to an impending budget shortfall, including freezing all non-essential travel, canceling costly events like the annual Fourth of July celebration, electing not to purchase non-essential supplies and closely examining spending, Brooks says that PTC has carefully considered the long-term implications of this cut.

"This is the most severe funding cut this college has experienced in its history, and we don't expect the situation to improve in the next 18 months. We have to assume that this is a permanent funding cut, so we've made every effort to trim our spending in ways that make sense in the long term,' said Brooks.

From an academic standpoint, all deans have been asked to take on additional teaching responsibilities and faculty members will be picking up an extra course load.

But PTC's largest expense is in personnel. Since March, the college has eliminated 15 full-time positions. Of those fifteen, 7 full-time positions have been eliminated in response to the most recent round of cuts. 7 part-time positions have been eliminated, and the college is asking full-time employees to pick up additional hours to cover the responsibilities of those positions.

In addition to these measures, all senior administrative employees have been asked to take voluntary furloughs. Three academic programs will be closed.

The college will also be economizing through a stringent energy management plan which will include scheduled energy usage, eliminating the weekend college and closing the 4 smaller county centers on Fridays and Saturdays. In addition to these measures, PTC will be looking at additional ways to generate cost savings on an ongoing basis.

PTC will also be working to mitigate some of the funding shortfall through increasing its revenue.

"We'll be looking at strategies that will increase enrollment. Our student body is the sustaining force of this institution, and a larger student population will enable us to offset some of these budget cuts," he said.

"But we're also concerned about the availability of financial aid for those students." Because of the severity of the state's budget shortfall, it's possible that the Lottery Tuition Assistance funds, which over 70 percent of Piedmont Technical College's students receive, could be in jeopardy.
"The loss of Lottery Tuition Assistance could cause disastrous harm to the economy in our region. Our community has already dealt with a round of substantial layoffs, and those people will need to come to us to be retrained to re-enter the work force," said Brooks. "If you take the lottery funds off the table, then many of those people arenÕt going to be able to afford the training they need."

Even though the economic outlook is troubling, Brooks remains optimistic, and he maintains that PTC will continue to strive to meet the needs of the communities it serves.

"Every segment of the college is making sacrifices to ensure that we can continue to provide a high level of service to our students, to our community and to the state," he said.