Serving Barnwell County and its neighbors since 1852
Until a few years ago, students learning to weld at South Carolina’s only historically Black technical college had to use decades-old equipment. The school has talked of growing its cybersecurity degree program, but the computer systems it has for students to train on are far from the latest model.
Just how old they are is unknown — at least, to legislators who toured the school.
Yet when Denmark Technical College sought money to put toward a proposed new $35 million cybersecurity, energy and healthcare building, Senate budget writers refused to fund any of it. The House provided $2.3 million for the project in its state budget proposal. But the final version of the budget that took effect July 1 gave zero.
“If the state won’t fund it, how are you going to grow the program,” Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg, told the SC Daily Gazette. “No one is going to pay money to go to a tech school that has old technology. In today’s day and age, nobody wants to go to a run-down college.”
It’s the second year in a row that the small tech school, located in sparsely populated Bamberg County along South Carolina’s rural southwestern border, has had its requests yanked from the budget as it battles ongoing financial problems.
Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto called it “a shot across the bow” from some Senate GOP leaders that Denmark Tech administrators need to balance the struggling school’s budget and boost enrollment.
The college developed a budget stabilization plan, as requested by the Legislature, but it wasn’t considered practical, Hutto said. “That was one of the frustrations,” he said.
The Orangeburg Democrat, along with others who represent or advocate for the state’s historically Black colleges and universities, acknowledge the college’s past leadership issues and failure to get in front of financial shortfalls. However, they question how their fellow legislators can expect the school to meet their goals if the funds for big-dollar projects needed to enter the 21st century are continuously denied.
In turn, the only option the school is left with are deeper cuts and nothing to attract the greater number of students it would need to raise revenues.
“That’s an abomination,” said Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, who sits on the House higher education budget panel.
“I don’t recall us doing that to other tech schools,” the Orangeburg Democrat added.
The school has not had a new technical building since 1961, and it hasn’t had a new academic building since 1975. Meanwhile legislators funneled $140 million for projects and maintenance at 14 of South Carolina’s other technical colleges in the current budget. Two rural schools — Denmark Tech and Northeastern Tech based in Cheraw — were left out.
Denmark Tech administrators did not grant multiple requests over several weeks from the SC Daily Gazette for an interview.
Denmark Tech’s troubles at the top began in 2009, when then-President John Waddell was suspended without pay after an audit found some unnamed “administrative irregularities,” The Associated Press reported.
The college then went through a series of interim and short-term leadership, with none remaining in charge for more than three years. In 2017, the Legislature voted unanimously to temporarily put the state Technical College System in control of the school in dire financial straits.
The student body had fallen from about 2,000 full- and part-time students in fall 2012 to just 600 students four years later ahead of the tech system taking over, according to data from the state’s higher education agency. All tech school enrollment was on the decline at this time, though none as precipitous as Denmark Tech. And while numbers plummeted, little was done to cut expenses or workforce to match needs.
Over that same four-year period, the school’s cash on hand sank to about $285,000 from just over $9 million, The Associated Press reported.
In 2019, House budget writers recommended converting Denmark Tech to a trade school, offering industry certificates for flight training and skilled jobs in construction. Proponents saw the mission change as a way to keep the doors open. But advocates of the school protested, and legislators scrapped the idea.
Later that year, the tech college system found itself shuffling around $2 million from the pool of money it doles out to its 16 schools, taking a portion from the others to make up for Denmark Tech’s shortfall. System leaders discovered further issues, including misspending of $500,000 the state budget provided the school in 2018 to buy equipment that it instead used to cover payroll.
When Denmark Tech’s most recent president, Willie Todd Jr., stepped to the helm in January 2020, legislators tasked him to come up with a plan to turn around the cash-strapped school as they debated its future.
Three months later, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, sending colleges nationwide into a financial tailspin.
That fall, the college updated its 22 welding education booths — a win for both students and employers — with Demark Tech’s portion of lottery profits the Legislature provided to tech schools statewide for “high demand job skill training equipment.”
Cobb-Hunter was among legislators pushing for the conversion of Denmark Tech to a trade school. But she said her viewpoint has since evolved, largely thanks to Todd’s leadership.
“I think they proved themselves,” Cobb-Hunter said. “But leadership without resources can only do so much. It’s hard to grow when you’re constantly begging for crumbs.”
Todd’s last day at the school was June 30 as he left to become president of Talladega College in Alabama.
Today, enrollment hovers around 700 students and Denmark Tech employs about 50 people. In the college’s latest financial report, expenses outpaced revenue by $1 million. All of this falls against a backdrop of declining college enrollment nationwide and a so-called “enrollment cliff” after decades of declining birthrates mean a smaller pool of potential students.
Last year, legislators agreed to let the school use $2.2 million in maintenance funds for operations but denied it $2.4 million in the budget for renovating a pair of buildings on campus. The shift in funds also came with the stipulation that the college develop a budget stabilization plan and a reduction of employees.
Legislators representing the college say looking at the numbers on the balance sheet doesn’t tell the whole story about the technical college that’s been chronically underfunded almost since its beginning.
A 1947 state law created Denmark Tech as a trade school for Black South Carolinians, and it opened a year later. The school became part of the statewide technical college system in 1969, eight years after that system’s creation, as the school for students in Allendale, Bamberg and Barnwell counties.
But according to Hutto, as the state was still struggling against national desegregation mandates, it didn’t fund Denmark Tech at the same level as other tech schools in the system.
“It’s easy for people to say today you should be doing great now,” Bamberg said of the racial history surrounding the college. “But it doesn’t change the reality that, for so long, some people were purposefully screwed by and left out of the system. People seem to forget that, for some people, the starting line was 100 miles behind everyone else.”
Furthermore, Denmark Tech covers South Carolina’s three smallest counties, with high schools educating only about 400 seniors total, according to state education department data. Many of these students come from poor families, putting them more at risk and requiring extra aid to graduate.
And there is little industry in the tri-county region where students can get a job after graduating. The lack of an industrial tax base has put the cost of K-12 school construction on residents through high property taxes.
All these factors compound to impact Denmark Tech and the region’s residents, Bamberg said.
Finally, technical colleges are designed to educate students closer to home. If the school were to close, he said, students from area high schools would have to travel farther than their peers for a technical education.
Many already do. They drive to Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College, about 30 miles from the Denmark campus, or to Aiken Technical College, which is also about 30 miles from parts of Barnwell County. Other alternatives include the University of South Carolina satellite campus in Allendale.
Advocates argue more students would enroll at Denmark Tech if the facilities were up to date.
“Legislators can’t just keep saying, ‘Oh, poor Denmark Tech’ and not own up to our responsibility in how we got here,” Cobb-Hunter said.
“I hear the governor and everyone talk about South Carolina being in the best financial condition it’s ever been,” Bamberg added. “But we have a state technical college that has old buildings that were around when peoples’ grandparents attended. It’s so frustrating.”
It remains to be seen whether prior recommendations will resurface.
Back in 2019, the state technical system suggested turning Denmark Tech into a satellite campus of Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College. More recently, Gov. Henry McMaster has called for a study of South Carolina’s 33 two- and four-year public colleges to potentially consolidate some of them.
Sen. Ronnie Cromer, who chairs the Senate’s higher education budget panel, said both the technical college and South Carolina State University in Orangeburg — the state’s only public historically Black university — are in need of upgrades of their own. They’re where many of the region’s students are choosing to attend already, and they’re outperforming Denmark Tech, he said.
“It siphons off money that can be put to good use,” the Newberry County Republican said of bolstering Denmark Tech. “Those that have proven themselves and are educating our children to the best of their ability, they are the ones that really deserve to be funded properly.”
Published in the S.C. Daily Gazette on July 14
Editor’s note: This article was corrected Tuesday, July 29, to reflect that Denmark Tech’s welding booths for students were updated in September 2020, as per information provided by a college spokesperson.
