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- Cost of living no doubt has been center stage, but also the coming season and summer, so what is that going to look like?

Will vacations be different?

What about just our way of living?

There is a lot to unpack in this program.

I'm Chris William, and welcome again to the most widely watched and longest running program on Carolina business, policy and public affairs seen each and every week across the Carolinas for more than 30 years now.

In a moment, we start our dialogue, and later on, the President of the College of Charleston, Dr. Andrew Hsu joins us, and we start right now.

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On this edition of Carolina Business Review, Colin Campbell from North Carolina Tribune, Andy Brack from Charleston City Paper and Statehouse Report, and special guest Dr. Andrew Hsu, President of the College of Charleston.

(exciting music) - Very interesting times in the Carolinas, and certainly politically, no surprise at all.

Colin, welcome to the program.

Andy, good to see you.

Colin, you get the first pitch here.

This happened for policy wonks for sure, but if you weren't looking, most people probably wouldn't see the fact that for the first time I guess you could say historically at least in North Carolina because it's measured, there are more unaffiliated voters than there are Democrats or Republican in the old North state.

So what does that mean, Colin?

- It's definitely been sort of an erosion in registrations for both the Republicans and Democrats as more and more people just opt not to put their political views out there.

I think it's often misinterpreted as people having more of an independent streak.

I don't really see that in North Carolina politics.

We're still a very 50/50 state, and a lot of people who register as unaffiliated may vote predominately Republican or they may vote predominately Democrat, but they are choosing not to have their label out there.

In North Carolina you could actually go online, plug in your next door neighbor's name and find out how they're registered.

I think a lot of people just don't want to have that label on themselves publicly.

I know I as a journalist don't.

I'm among the unaffiliated in part because of what I do and the fact that I don't want how I'm voting to be in any way, shape or form a public record.

The challenge in North Carolina law that comes with that is this state is very much a two party system state.

It's very hard for a third party candidate to run in this state.

It's incredibly hard if you want to run with an unaffiliated label.

You have to get thousands of signatures on a petition to even get on the ballot, and those that have succeeded in that, who are very few and far between, often go nowhere when the general election comes around, so essentially what you have is a third of the voting population, and unless they want to change their voting registration, doesn't have the option to run for office, which I think results in more partisan people who really embrace the label as being the ones who ultimately run for office in this state.

- Andy, not surprisingly South Carolina is a little bit more wild west about this and you don't have to raise your hand and say I'm Republican or Democrat or unaffiliated, but do you get a sense that there is some shift as Colin just talked about, the unaffiliated being, I want to be active but I don't want everyone to know what I'm doing?

- I think yes, but maybe in a little different way, because we don't register by party.

Anybody can go to any primary that they want to and vote.

What I sense out there is that you have a core group of Democrats that are smaller than the core group of Republicans, and the Independents are just more and more people who are frustrated with both sides not doing anything.

I mean, it seems to me like the number of people that I hear that are just frustrated by state government particularly because it's become so much more like national government.

They're just like, why the heck should we do anything?

So they're either not voting or they're just kind of holding their nose.

- Colin, back to you.

Maybe the US Senate race for that Richard Burr seat is not the right one, because of course the Republican primary on it is pretty highly partisan, or at least it seems to be.

But does that mean that anyone that runs for office now is going to start to be more sensitive and playing, quote-unquote, to the unaffiliated voter, or are they going to be staking it out and looking at it differently?

- You know, like Andy said, some of these people who are registering as unaffiliated just are sort of irritated with the partisan process, so they may end up being people who really just vote in the general elections if they vote at all.

But you are seeing some efforts particularly in western North Carolina, that's the district where Congressman Madison Cawthorn has been making headlines for a variety of very controversial statements, for his arrest record, for his comments about Russia, and there you're seeing a pretty organized movement of people who typically vote Democratic registering as unaffiliated and choosing to vote in the Republican primary, recognizing that that district is so heavily Republican that they're probably gonna have a Republican congressman no matter what, and so if you're left-leaning in that area, that's the way you could perhaps influence that and get a congressman who's not Madison Cawthorn who may be a little bit more centrist, and so it'll be interesting to see if that becomes more of a trend, if that has any impact whatsoever just against the sheer numbers of the hardcore Republican or Democratic primary voters.

Does that move the needle at all sort of remains to be seen.

- Andy, shifting gears a little bit, because this has been bullseye, in top of mind for a long time, with good reason, this idea that inflation now is broadly being felt, not just wholesale in retail, but in personal family balance sheets for sure.

Does this spell, and let's put your econ hat on for just a second, does this spell a turn in the economy?

Are we gonna look back and say yeah, that's the thing that pushed us into a recession?

- I don't know, because I am not an economist.

I'm a columnist, which I guess means that I can have an opinion about everything.

I do know that you can see it at the grocery store in meat and the price of eggs and this, that and the other, but I know that in our business we've seen a rise in the cost of paper and even delivery charges are going up.

They're putting extra little charges on all the time, and I think most businesses are starting to experience that.

Things are getting more and more expensive, and unless we can make sure that the Fed does some stuff that tries to keep things under control, I am a little bit worried that we're going into a more expensive time.

- And Colin, David Mounts, Inmar Intelligence, Winston-Salem, was on this program not long ago, and they are in the business of retail data.

He said, and I'm gonna paraphrase, but David Mounts from Inmar said that we can granularly see in retail food buying that people are giving up foodstuffs for prescriptions because of the rate of inflation.

Do you think, same question maybe a different way, do you think this is the tipping point for a recession?

- I think it's gonna be hard to get a handle on.

You can raise interest rates, but ultimately we're already in a situation where the housing market is so hard to get into in most of the major metro areas in North and South Carolina and across the country that that's gonna make home buying become out of reach for people.

It's gonna make home buying become much more expensive.

There's just not a lot of good tools I think economically to deal with this and get it under control.

I think it's possible you're headed for a recession.

There is one piece of good news I saw in the last week on this front out of North Carolina.

An economist down at UNCW did some projections on wage growth for the past year in North Carolina compared against the rate of inflation, and wage growth is just a percentage point or two higher than the rate of inflation, so that's a good sign for folks who've gotten a raise over the last year.

That's offsetting a lot of that increase in retail prices, but of course that's not everybody.

Not everybody has managed either to get a new and better job or get a raise, and if you're living paycheck to paycheck and you have to watch the prices of everything down to the dollar, you're in a pretty rough territory right now and it doesn't look like that's gonna be improving any time soon.

- Chris, there is one good thing going on, is that the employee has a lot more power than he or she did a couple of years ago, because in South Carolina, we've got a 3% unemployment rate, which is just unheard of, and so you do see people leaving jobs and going to places to get higher pay, which they need because houses are so expensive and rent's gone up.

I think there's a new study that shows rent in Charleston went up 20% over the last couple of years.

Things are getting more expensive, but I think that there is a little bit of if somebody is unhappy with how they're getting paid, they can perhaps find a new job.

I was talking to a guy last night who runs a restaurant, and he pays his young staff $8-$10 an hour, but they're making, he says, $10-$12 an hour in tips, so they're making a pretty good amount for a restaurant, which is an industry at least in this area that is extremely challenged in getting new staff.

- Colleges and universities are at the core of economic development in many ways, but they're also large employers.

They also have just a general sense of wellbeing in most communities, so to be a college president takes a lot of work and maybe even a social scientist.

Our guest is certainly a scientist, a rocket scientist, but he runs now the College of Charleston since 2018.

We are glad to welcome to the program and certainly to the Carolinas a little bit late, Dr. Andrew Hsu from the College of Charleston.

Dr. Hsu, welcome to the program.

- Thank you, Chris.

Good to be here.

- Thank you.

Dr. Hsu, we had Mayor Tecklenburg from Charleston on not long ago, and he was very adamant about not just the growth of Charleston and the low country but what that represented for the growth of the state, the growth of the region.

There's something parallel going on here with the College of Charleston.

Is the growth in student enrollment, is that directly the same benefit of the growth in migration in Charleston, or is there some other motivation that's going on?

- I wouldn't say that there is a direct link, but there is certainly a link.

First let me say, Chris, that we're not seeing tremendous growth in enrollment, and because we're a downtown landlocked university, we're not planning on having any major growth in our enrollment.

What we're growing with the growth of the Charleston and the low country region is really its reputation.

Since I came here in 2019, our number of applications had gone up from about 14,000 applications to now 22,000 applications for approximately 2,400 spots.

So I would say that we're growing tremendously in terms of our reputation, but not necessarily our enrollment.

- [Chris] Colin, question?

- I'm up here in North Carolina, and we're seeing our higher ed, our UNC system, getting a ton of money for new construction, new capital projects, thanks a lot to the federal government American Rescue Plan.

Are you seeing that in South Carolina, and are you also finding that the supply chain issues, labor shortages are making it really hard to keep those projects under budget and moving forward?

- It's more the latter.

Certainly we're seeing an increase in state support for the universities, and we very much appreciate the support from the state, but we're not seeing anywhere near the type of growth in terms of dollars for facilities in North Carolina.

We're certainly seeing the tremendous growth in cost, cost by the supply chain issues here on campus, which is negatively impacting our ability to improve our facilities.

- [Chris] Andy?

- Dr. Hsu, I'm just down the street from you right now.

I wanted to share that I used to teach public relations and news writing at the college and enjoyed it, but the thing I was surprised about, and this was 20 years ago, is that some of the students couldn't write and they weren't as prepared as you'd think they should be.

I know that I've heard some faculty complain about that since, so what is it that the college and/or the state of South Carolina and North Carolina can do to better prepare students so that they're ready to get to college, start studying in college when they get there?

- Sure Andy, good to see you.

That's a very good question, and I think it doesn't have a simple answer, unfortunately.

The fact that students couldn't write is not just a higher education issue.

I think it's all the way from K-12, and certainly I think from the state level more investment in K-12 education certainly would help, but I would say at the College of Charleston we pride ourselves in our long tradition of liberal arts education.

As you know, we're one of the oldest institutions, 252 years old, one of the oldest in the south, and we carry that long tradition of a good liberal arts education.

Go ahead.

- One of the things, it's interesting you used the term liberal arts education, because I've written about several times that that doesn't mean you're training people to be liberals.

You're training people to be thinkers, and I think the term liberal arts is kind of confusing to a lot of people.

- You're exactly right.

Liberal arts has nothing to do with conservative or liberal.

Liberal arts education really means a well-rounded education in terms of languages, philosophy and the communication and things like that.

Going back to your question earlier Andy, the college really is doing a lot in terms of trying to improve our students' ability to communicate, and we have tutoring centers.

We have both peer tutors from students as well as faculty mentors.

We're doing a lot to try to address the issue that you brought up.

- Maybe we need to come up with a term that balances the liberal arts idea with conservative science.

Maybe that's another division of the school, but you can work that out later Andy, and Dr. Hsu, I want to come back to you on this tuition.

I know ad nauseum you and many of your contemporaries know that the rate of inflation at colleges has been two and three X of what normal rate of inflation is.

So here we find ourselves with what has been labeled as a student debt crisis.

Couple of questions, sir.

Is it a crisis?

And number two, what is a fair way to resolve the student debt issue?

It's not to give it all away, but it's also not to change or modify, so it's gotta be something in the middle there.

- Chris, I certainly think it's at a crisis level.

We all know that higher education is becoming more and more expensive, but I think we're already doing some of the right things.

With the state investing more dollars, that would allow us to keep our tuition for our in-state students fixed, and in fact, if you look at constant dollars, the cost for students going to public schools in state had actually gone down over the last 10-15 years.

I think the solution really to me is more government investment.

I just came from the midwest about three years ago, and in the midwest, for every dollar that a student would spend, the state used to spend two dollars.

Now for every dollar the student would spend, the state is spending 50 cents.

In South Carolina, for example, for every dollar the student spent, the state is giving us 10 cents, and now it's gone up to 12 cents.

So I think there is a gap between the students' needs and the state's investment in higher education.

- [Chris] Colin?

- Chris, speaking of that affordability point, I know here in North Carolina there seems to be increasing partnerships between the community colleges and the public and even private universities to try to make it more of a seamless process for students who want to start out at a community college, save some money that way in their first year or two and then transfer in.

Are you seeing a lot of that in Charleston, and are there efforts to partner with South Carolina's community colleges to try to get at that affordability a little bit more?

- Yes Colin.

I think what you just described, the seamless transition from two year colleges to four year colleges is a great way to help students access higher education, and that's something that I have been actively involved in since I came here.

I've been a good friend with our neighbor Triton Tech and its outstanding President Mary Thornley, and she and I have been discussing this since my first day on the job.

Also at the state level, we're talking or discussing a transfer articulation so that every single student who has received an AA or AS degree can then transfer to a four year college without additional cost or additional credit hours.

- [Chris] Andy?

- Dr. Hsu, most college presidents from South Carolina are white guys, so I thought that it was a pretty good step for the College of Charleston board to kind of expand their vision, and I know that you're committed to diversity and inclusion.

I thought it might be good to share some of the stuff that y'all are doing at the college to promote diversity and inclusion, which is something that we try to do at the Charleston City Paper.

- Thank you Andy, for that comment.

In fact, I remember, I think it might be actually the Charleston City Paper who had an article when I first arrived, and I think within sort of two sentences you mentioned that I was the first minority president for the College of Charleston in its 250 year history.

Certainly as an ethnic minority myself, I have a personal interest in promoting diversity and inclusion on our campus, and in fact, we're indeed doing a lot in terms of trying to support minority students' success.

To me, diversity means that you not only have to bring the students in but you also have to make sure that they're successful here, that we provide a welcoming culture here on campus.

We have at least 15 different initiatives on this campus that we're trying to go through in order to support our inclusion and equity efforts.

- Do you look at that differently?

Not to be indifferent or not without difference to who you are personally, but also the position you hold.

Do you look at that differently because you are a minority as we define being a minority?

- I don't think I look at it differently.

I think everyone's experience with color, their viewpoint, and certainly I can't say that with my personal experience I'm not biased in a certain way, but I think it's no more biased or seeing things differently than anyone else.

- We're gonna run out of time Colin, so I'm not gonna be able to pitch it to you.

But President Hsu, I want to wrap this in here before we, we've got about three minutes left.

In Q1 of this year under your leadership, the Board of Trustees along with yourself floated the idea and did approve the idea of a health sciences school at the College of Charleston.

That's a pretty meaningful step.

Again, a couple of questions around there.

Across town school MUSC seems to have a corner that, but is there enough capacity for training and advancing healthcare workers in the environment?

Is that what you see, or where do you think the end game for the College of Charleston is with this?

- Well Chris, let me first say that our program is in partnership with the Medical University of South Carolina just two blocks away, and they focus primarily on graduate education in the health field, and we're trying to focus on undergraduate education, and I think it's a great match between the two institutions.

If the pandemic taught us anything, it also taught us the fact that we needed more and better trained health professionals, and health science certainly is an area that we're seeing great demand from industry, but also great demand from students.

So we certainly see this as a growth area for the College of Charleston.

- It's not gonna be the right question, but at what point as more and more schools, Wake announced a deal with Atrium, Novant announced a deal up in the central part of North and South Carolina.

When do we have too much capacity for training?

Are we still a ways from having too much capacity for healthcare workers?

- From where I can see, we're nowhere near having the capacity to produce enough healthcare workers.

As you know, everywhere in the country we're short of nurses and I think that shortage is more obvious among nurses, but it's not just nurses.

It's all the healthcare administrators, healthcare workers.

There's a critical shortage.

- We have about a minute left.

Colin, do you have a quick follow-up?

- Just last minute.

The climate on college campuses has been odd the last couple of years with all the COVID challenges.

What's the mood like at College of Charleston among the students and faculty as we get closer to a new normal and things seem a little bit more reasonable on campus?

- We have about 30 seconds, President Hsu.

- If I have one word, it's optimism, and if I can use two words, the second word would be resilience.

We have done a tremendous job and our faculty and students and staff, they're all very optimistic.

In fact, the institution came out of the pandemic a much stronger institution.

We have not stopped implementing and pushed forward of our 10 year strategic plan, and we're making tremendous progress there.

- President Hsu, thank you first of all for joining us and taking time out of your schedule.

We appreciate the leadership in the low country.

Best of luck going forward.

Please come back and we can unpack more of these details.

- Thank you Chris, thank you for having me.

A pleasure.

- Andy, nice to see you as well.

Colin, welcome to the program.

Please come back.

- Thanks for having me.

- Thank you.

Thank you for watching us.

If you have comments or questions, CarolinaBusinessReview.org.

Until next week, happy weekend.

Goodnight.

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(exciting music)