South Carolina, University of

▪ university system, South Carolina, United States

      coeducational U.S. state university system based in South Carolina's capital city of Columbia. In addition to the main campus at Columbia, there are four-year branch campuses at Aiken and Spartanburg and two-year regional campuses at Union, Sumter, Beaufort, Lancaster, and Allendale, the latter of which is known as the Salkehatchie campus. The comprehensive state university system offers more than 350 degree programs, including about 10 associate degrees, 120 bachelor's, 180 master's, 60 Ph.D.'s, and professional degrees in law, medicine, and pharmacy. University scholars conduct research in such areas as marine biology, fracture mechanics, industrial policy, artificial intelligence, pharmacoeconomics, earth sciences, archaeology and anthropology, suicide, and families. Library holdings at the main campus exceed 2.6 million volumes. There are approximately 36,800 students in enrollment throughout the eight campuses of the university.

      Chartered in 1801, the school opened in 1805 as South Carolina College, the first state college to be entirely supported by annual public funding. It had an antebellum reputation as an elite college in the classical tradition; it pioneered such collegiate courses as geology and political economy. During the American Civil War the college was closed, and its buildings were used as a military hospital from 1862 to 1865. Blacks were admitted from 1873 to 1877, when the flight of white faculty and students forced the school to close. It reopened in 1880 as the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. This was one of six times in the last half of the 19th century that the school was reorganized under a new name.

      It became coeducational in 1893 and in 1906 was renamed the University of South Carolina. During World War II the university was used for naval training. The seven campuses outside Columbia were founded between 1959 and 1967.

* * *