SC higher education agency seeks more money

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s higher education agency says its first budget priority is recouping money that’s been cut from public colleges over the past two years.

The Commission on Higher Education’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2012-13 seeks an unspecified funding increase to reverse years of diminishing support to the state’s 33 public colleges.

Executive director Garrison Walters says in a letter to Gov. Nikki Haley that officials recognize the state’s economic difficulties. Still, he says renewed investment in public colleges is essential to the South Carolina’s future success.

Walters is set to present the agency’s budget request to the commission’s board on Thursday.

The letter is dated Thursday, and says South Carolina colleges have been cut by $346 million since 2008, and federal stimulus money that helped offset that is gone.