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New tech school investments to address increased enrollment, AI skills in manufacturing
Welders work to construct the Scout Motors paint shop in Blythewood April 10, 2025. Welding is among high-demand study programs at Midlands Technical College in Columbia without enough space to handle all who wish to enroll. (File photo by Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — For students hoping to study building and construction, Midlands Technical College has only 11 seats remaining in the program for the coming fall semester. The welding program is already at capacity. And a second enrollment surge in August is still expected, meaning additional incoming students will likely be waitlisted.
The Columbia-based technical college hopes to fix its capacity problems with a building expansion planned over the next several years.
More space for Midlands Tech students training for a job in the building trades and a Greenville Tech center that merges manufacturing and technology skills are among the largest projects for South Carolina's technical colleges in the 2025-26 state budget. Legislators spent $16 million on each.
In all, the spending package sent to Gov. Henry McMaster last week provides South Carolina's technical colleges with more than $150 million in one-time aid for building projects, maintenance and renovations. (See information box below.)
Training in automotive, industrial electricity, heating and cooling, as well as welding and construction have all seen a surge in demand the last five years, said Robbie Sharpe, who heads Midlands Tech's building construction program.
'Students are having to wait a semester or two just to get into these programs, because we just don't have any more space,' Sharpe said. 'Our programs are busting at the seams.'
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For more than a decade, industry and educators have struggled with how to address a shortage of new workers in the trades as existing employees reach retirement age. Now it seems that recruitment effort is paying off, as long as technical schools in the Palmetto State can find the space to train them.
'The market is there. The jobs are there. The placement is there for our students,' Sharpe said. 'They're making really good wages coming out of these programs with virtually zero debt. It's just, we're just at the end of our rope.'
In the meantime, Midlands has raised enrollment caps and added night classes.
For example, Sharpe twice doubled the number of seats available in the construction program for the school year that just ended — going from 20 seats to 40 seats for first-year students in the fall and then going from 40 seats to 80 seats in the spring. He filled all but five of them.
They've also asked students to start with math and English courses that fulfill general education requirements as they wait for seats to open up in their trade-specific classes.
'We're out of all of our creative options, and this isn't something that's going to go away anytime soon,' Sharpe said.
For years, Sharpe said, parents and educators were pushing high school seniors to pursue a four-year degree while trade education fell to the wayside.
'I've seen the mentality of students change over the last decade, but I've never seen this much momentum behind it,' Sharpe said. 'People now realize that these are not second-rate jobs. They're honorable careers.'
While the cost of a bachelor's degree has soared, scholarship programs for technical colleges, such as the $5,000-per-year S.C. Workforce Industry Needs (WINS) Scholarship that comes on top of other financial aid, are covering students' full tuition. When they graduate two years later, those same students are walking into jobs that pay upwards of $50,000 a year starting out.
SC colleges have frozen tuition for several years. University presidents say that's not sustainable.
Legislators approved $91.4 million for WINS Scholarships in the coming school year: $57.2 million from lottery profits and $34.2 million from the general fund.
'Now we have to kick it in high gear to get caught up (to demand),' Sharpe said.
The $16 million legislators included in the state budget that takes effect July 1 for Midlands Tech is expected to fully cover the cost of expanding an existing building to add more classrooms and workshop space on its campus near the airport in West Columbia.
But it will take the college several more years to design the space and complete construction.
While all of the state's technical colleges have trades programs, those at Midlands Tech and Greenville Technical College are among the largest in the state.
At the Upstate tech school that feeds major employers, such as BMW, Michelin and Lockheed Martin, efforts are focused on building a new $41 million Center for Industrial Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence.
The state budget would cover $16 million of that cost.
The purpose, according to Greenville Tech's spokeswoman Becky Mann, is to give the technicians who keep manufacturing lines up and running some expertise in cybersecurity and data science as artificial intelligence and other technologies become more ingrained in operations on the factory floor.
'Greenville Technical College will merge these two, high-demand skill sets in the Center for Industrial Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence, so that cybersecurity skills and artificial intelligence analytics protect plants against cyberattacks while anticipating and addressing maintenance needs and problems before they have a chance to occur,' according to a statement from the school.
The school cited IBM's Threat Intelligence Index, which has ranked manufacturing as the most targeted industry for four years in a row. The sector accounted for 26% of all cyberattacks worldwide in 2024, exceeding finance, insurance, and energy.
Among other major projects at South Carolina's tech schools is a $15 million 'Technical High School Workforce Center' at Central Carolina Technical College.
The money is meant to fund a partnership for a future technical high school in Sumter to give those student access to college programs offered by Central Carolina's Industrial Department, according to budget documents provided to the SC Daily Gazette.
'CCTC supports initiatives that expand access to technical education and strengthen our state's workforce,' college spokeswoman Nicole Miles wrote in an email.
No other details were available.
There are 16 technical colleges statewide. Here's a breakdown of how the budget doles out $150 million to 14 of them for projects, maintenance and renovations. Two schools receive nothing in one-time aid in the budget that starts July 1: Denmark Technical College and Northeastern Technical College.
• Aiken Technical College: $6.7 million
• Central Carolina Technical College: $23.5 million
• Florence-Darlington Technical College: $4 million
• Greenville Technical College: $24 million
• Horry-Georgetown Technical College: $8 million
• Midlands Technical College: $28.5 million
• Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College: $7.9 million
• Piedmont Technical College: $7 million
• Spartanburg Community College: $9.2 million
• Technical College of the Lowcountry: $1 million
• Tri-County Technical College: $9 million
• Williamsburg Technical College: $1 million
• York Technical College: $4 million
Source: Legislature's 2025-26 state budget summary control document
