We’ve bashed the crap out of reporter Wayne Washington of The (Columbia, S.C.) State newspaper on several occasions in the past … and deservedly so.
He and his paper have been textbook enablers of our South Carolina’s totally out-of-control public research universities, which continue to waste exorbitant sums of taxpayer money as they creep further away from their core mission of educating students.
This week, however, Washington (and The State) get props from us for their work in exposing the latest higher ed “pay-to-play” scam.
From The State:
Former University of South Carolina president Andrew Sorensen has been paid a combined $446,000 per year from the university and from the Greenville Hospital System as he touts a deal between the university and the hospital system that would expand USC’s medical education program in Greenville
Sorensen, who retired as president of USC in 2008, has been a staunch supporter of the deal, writing editorials in favor of expansion that have been published in the Journal of the S.C. Medical Association, The State and The (Charleston) Post and Courier. He has argued that the deal, which calls for GHS to spend $35 million to $39 million over the next seven to 10 years to help USC expand its medical education program, would help alleviate a shortage of primary care doctors in South Carolina without burdening taxpayers.
Umm … “without burdening taxpayers?”
Really?
Does that mean that Sorenson is going to give back the $236,097 taxpayer-funded portion of his gi-normous salary?
Remember … three years ago we were told by Sorenson and others that USC’s “Innovista” research campus was going to usher in the “hydrogen economy of the future” and create “thousands of high paying jobs” in downtown Columbia, S.C. (promises which were trumpeted in The State, incidentally).
Yeah … $150 million in public funds later … NADA.
Pardon our French, but we’re calling out both Sorenson and this shady arrangement as being completely full of sh*t.
But in so calling, props to Washington and The State for actually exposing this garbage instead of … you know … not exposing it.
