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Issue: Ongoing in-state college tuition freeze
For the last seven years, budget writers have provided additional annual dollars to the state’s public colleges and universities in order for them to keep tuition rates frozen for in-state students.
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Republican nominee Alan Wilson
Attorney General Alan Wilson said in an interview that the overarching theme of affordability, which has become a central issue in the 2026 election, comes to mind when speaking about college tuition.
He pointed to his Families First Audit initiative as his push to make sure “fraud, waste and abuse (aren’t) baked into what they’re doing,” he said. “We want to make sure that we keep costs down for all South Carolina families.”
“I’m okay with continuing to keep that tuition increasing cap, but I also want to do a complete audit of the colleges and universities to ensure that they’re not increasing funds elsewhere,” Wilson said.
Tuition rates specifically may be top of mind for the GOP nominee. Wilson’s son is a freshman at the University of South Carolina, and he has a daughter who is a junior in high school.
Democratic nominee Jermaine Johnson
State Rep. Jermaine Johnson, D-Richland, who has four kids, one who is attending Midlands Technical College, said he would continue pushing for tuition mitigation money in the state budget.
“I don’t think that Gov. (Henry) McMaster and the General Assembly have done enough to try to find better solutions to this problem,” Johnson said after speaking to a group of college students at the University of South Carolina.
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“We have not been studying this issue to figure out how we can lower the cost without utilizing tuition mitigation,” he continued. So I would love to continue that on, but however, and simultaneously, I’d be having the best and the brightest subject-matter experts figure out how we can lower the cost for tuitions around the state.”
Why tuition mitigation is an ongoing issue?
Freezing tuition rates for in-state students has been an attempt to help keep the college of obtaining a higher education down and limit how much debt students incur while attending college. In order to help public universities cover the costs of inflation, the General Assembly has increased annual funding to schools each year. For the 2026-27 fiscal year, budget writers sent an additional $35.7 million in annual money to the state’s universities for operating costs.
Colleges and universities, however are, allowed to raise fees if needed, such as an athletic fee or housing fees.
However, in recent years, lawmakers have floated plans to allow for a 2% increase on tuition rates, or increase tuition rates from year to year, but requiring universities to keep the rate frozen for a student for four years.
Neither of those proposals were approved by the full General Assembly and removed from budget plans before final passage because Gov. McMaster said he was against those ideas, saying colleges had to rein in their spending.
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