Guest Column: It’s Time to Rethink Taxpayer Funding for MUSC

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by LUKE RANKIN

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South Carolina taxpayers just watched as a national controversy unfolded at Clemson University. Professors, paid in part by the public, celebrated the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The incident rightly raised eyebrows, not only about the judgment of those professors, but about the broader question: why are hardworking taxpayers footing the bill for universities that often seem far removed from the values of the people they serve?

Clemson receives more than $300 million a year in state support. That number shocked many South Carolinians. But Clemson is not alone. The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) also benefits from a stream of taxpayer dollars, totaling hundreds of millions annually. At a time when families are stretched thin, legislators must ask whether subsidizing higher education, and particularly professional institutions like MUSC, remains a core function of government.

The truth is…it does not. The legitimate responsibilities of state government are straightforward: public safety, infrastructure, secondary education, and the protection of liberty. Funding universities is not on that list. Yet every year, our state pours money into institutions whose faculties lean overwhelmingly left. Numerous surveys show that college professors are far more liberal than the public they’re endowed to support.  And in a conservative state like South Carolina, they’re certainly more liberal than their students and the taxpaying parents who entrust their children to public institutions. We are asking plumbers in Pickens, farmers in Florence, and shopkeepers in Spartanburg to subsidize ivory-tower politics that mock their beliefs.

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The debate becomes even clearer with MUSC. No one disputes that MUSC provides valuable medical services. Its hospitals and clinics save lives, train doctors, and conduct research. But here’s the problem: MUSC is also competing directly against private hospitals and health systems across South Carolina, none of whom enjoy a taxpayer subsidy! That is not a level playing field. When government props up one competitor with public dollars, it distorts the market and weakens the private providers who must stand on their own two feet.

Some will argue that MUSC deserves special treatment because of its role in training future physicians and serving rural areas. Those missions are important. But the fact is, MUSC has drifted from that mission. Scholarships, targeted rural health grants, and partnerships with private hospitals are smarter, fairer solutions than writing MUSC a blank check year after year. In fact, many states rely more heavily on private medical schools and partnerships without shortchanging the health needs of their citizens.

We should be clear-eyed about what higher education has become: a sector that too often drifts into ideological activism while enjoying a government-guaranteed safety net.  This applies regardless of a university’s status — public or private. In the case of professors at Clemson University, funded directly with tax dollars, or, in the case of a professor at Presbyterian College — who made horrific comments — both the college and its students benefit from publicly funded programs like the South Carolina Tuition Grants Program. In both instances, taxpayers are implicated and forced to be unwilling investors in behavior we abhor. The same dynamic exists when MUSC leverages state dollars to dominate a health care market that should be competitive.

South Carolina’s legislature has a responsibility to taxpayers. That means rethinking whether higher education subsidies serve a legitimate public purpose, or whether they’ve become outdated relics of another era. It means asking whether MUSC should continue to receive hundreds of millions in state dollars while competing against private hospitals without that advantage. And it means recognizing that the core duties of government — protecting citizens, building roads, enforcing laws — do not include propping up universities that no longer reflect the people of this state.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

Luke Rankin is a health insurance advisor who represents the people of House District 14 (.pdf) in the S.C. General Assembly.

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