Carolina Day Letter to General Assembly

February 11, 2025

Dear Members of the General Assembly,

Today, the University of South Carolina celebrates Carolina Day 2025 – a day for students and staff from our eight System institutions to tell you how much USC means to them and to their communities around the state.

Across our System, we are seeing record-setting enrollment, with more than 55,000 students representing every county in South Carolina. And our most recent economic impact study shows that our System has a $7.4 billion-dollar annual impact on the S.C. economy.

Your commitment to higher education makes this possible. Together, we are improving access and affordability for South Carolinians who want to earn a college degree. With state support, we have held tuition flat at our Columbia campus for six years in a row and seven years at our 4-year and 2-year institutions – a trend we hope to continue. 

In addition, two new USC initiatives are opening doors to more of our state’s best students: our Admissions Guarantee Initiative, which targets the top 10% of S.C. high school graduates; and the USC Commitment Initiative, which provides free tuition and academic fees for S.C. students in the top 10% of their high school class who come from lower-income families. 

We are also building the best workforce for our state. Our highly successful internship and interdisciplinary-certificate programs are preparing USC graduates with the skills that employers value most.

We are moving forward with SC Nexus, our Regional Technology and Innovation Hub, in conjunction with the state Commerce Department and 50-plus S.C. institutions and organizations. Our Nexus project, the Carolina Institute for Battery Innovation, will leverage USC’s proven strengths in battery research and prepare our graduates to excel in the field of energy research and manufacturing.

Our USC Brain Health Network serves rural communities across the state with four clinics providing diagnosis and treatment of dementia, Alzheimer’s and brain-related illnesses; a fifth one will open soon. We will also break ground this month for a state-of-the-art School of Medicine facility, the first piece of our comprehensive new health sciences campus. And we have announced plans for a critically needed neurological hospital and rehabilitation center to provide specialized care and rehab in a single location – the first of its kind in the Southeast.

We are grateful for your steadfast support in all these efforts, as we work together to advance the best interests of our state. I hope to see you at our Carolina Day legislative reception tonight at 5:30 p.m. at the Pastides Alumni Center.

Sincerely,

Michael D. Amiridis
President