USC To Claim “Matching” Money In Biz School Shuffle

Liberal Lake City financier Darla Moore will announce on Friday that a five-year old gift has finally been matched by the University of South Carolina, sources tell FITS.

But has it?

In 2004, Moore gave the University $45 million – a gift the school was required to match with mostly private funds.

Six years earlier, Moore gave USC $25 million – and had its business school named in her honor.

When Moore made her second gift, former USC President Andrew Sorenson said that $30 million of the required matching funds would come from “private sources,” although it’s unclear whether or not that actually happened or whether the school is using some “creative accounting” to reach that figure.

Also, the timing of Moore’s announcement – which some are already referring to as a “bailout” of current USC President Harris Pastides and the school’s failed ‘Innovista‘ project – certainly raises questions.

Earlier this month USC concluded an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that will lease out its current business school for 20 years. DOJ will use the business school for training federal prosecutors, i.e. what it does at a $26 million federal facility constructed next door to the business school a mere decade ago.

This $106 million deal will allegedly “save” taxpayers $42 million – at least according to U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Again, that’s a debatable claim, because USC is planning on building a new $90 million business school to replace the one it is leasing to the Justice Department. An estimated $65 million of the cost for that facility will be paid for with DOJ lease revenue, while $15 million is slated to come from the “matching gift” Moore is announcing Friday.

The remaining $10 million USC says it will pay for with “private donations.”

In addition to those costs, though, USC is also on the hook for $25 million in renovations to the old business school before its new tenants move in.

So yeah … this may be saving the Department of Justice money, but as far as we can tell it’s costing USC an arm and a leg.

Meanwhile, sources tell FITS that the real motivation behind this plan is to move USC’s internationally-renowned, money-making business school into Innovista, an empty shell of a scientific “research campus” which has failed miserably to produce the promised jobs and private investment University officials and state leaders like Speaker Bobby Harrell promised.

Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars have been pouring into Innovista, but at last count only $5.1 million in private investment had been obtained and less than 250 jobs (most of them academic positions) had been created.

Pastides hinted at this motivation recently when he said that the business school will “build the intellectual foundation of Innovista.”

Construction on the new business school will begin in early 2010. The facility will take an estimated three years to build.

Comments