| | Issue #21.17 :: 04/23/2008 - 04/29/2008 | Reports: S.C. Pitiful in Economic Development
But Progress Can Be Made
| BY RON AIKEN
| Two recently published reports about economic development in South Carolina paint a picture of a state suffering from a poor, undereducated work force, a decline in per capita income and growing business costs such as health care and workers’ compensation that limit both the formation and growth of small businesses.
However, both publications — the state Chamber of Commerce’s Break Away South Carolina and the annual report of New Carolina (South Carolina’s Council on Competitiveness) — offer a way forward to correct the state’s weaknesses and build on its strengths, such as clusters of successful industry in the Upstate and along the coast.
To no one’s surprise, South Carolina’s schools do not prepare work force-ready students. The state ranks 49th in high school graduation rate (2005 data) and 45th in SAT scores (2006 data), according to Break Away South Carolina.
In higher education, South Carolina ranks 39th in bachelor’s degree attainment and 35th in the number of top-ranked graduate schools with seven, well behind North Carolina (11th with 35), Georgia (21st with 19) and Tennessee (25th with 16).
Venture capital activity, long considered the chief indicator of a state’s technology financing capacity, plummeted in South Carolina from 2003-06, dropping 57 percent over that time to fall from 23rd in the country in 2002 to 42nd in 2006, according to the Break Away report.
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Tourism, especially along the coast, is one of South Carolina’s greatest underutilized economic development resources, according to a report by New Carolina-South Carolina’s Council on Competitiveness. File Photo
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Still, strengths exist, according to Amy Love of New Carolina.
“Michael Porter, a Harvard professor and specialist in competitive strategies, came out with a study for South Carolina back in 2003, and one of the key things to come out of that was the need to further develop economic development clusters that already were in place and going strong,” Love says, “clusters like the automotive industry in the Upstate, agricultural businesses in the Pee Dee and tourism along the coast and especially Myrtle Beach and Charleston.”
New Carolina’s annual report identifies eight cluster areas: distribution services, apparel, automotive, recycling, agribusiness, nuclear, textiles and tourism.
“Clusters work and are a major goal in marketing the state’s economic development future,” Love says. “Geography is a key to our regional strategy, strengthening what’s already happening where it can then trickle to local communities.”
In the Midlands, longtime business clusters in banking and insurance either went belly up or were purchased and moved out of state over the past 20 years, leaving a vacuum that’s been replaced only recently by insurance technology, advanced manufacturing, health care and potential hydrogen and fuel cell research, according to the New Carolina report.
To combat the state’s poor education rankings, New Carolina created a task force of eight key players from the public school and business arenas across the state charged with fostering a movement to address root causes of educational failure, including poverty and poor parenting.
“This is the first time in South Carolina that you’re seeing the private sector so involved with education and trying to improve the quality of it without waiting on the Legislature,” Love says. “It’s inspiring to see people coming together with a single goal from across many different industries.
“In the end, that’s what it’s going to take to truly bring long-term economic prosperity to South Carolina.” — RA | |
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