Program's 165 students could join class of 2016
The freshman class is growing by only a hair this year, but by its sophomore year, the class of 2016 could be almost 5 percent bigger than the class before it.
This year’s group inched up to 4,640 students, an increase of about 70 students, or 1.5 percent, and that figure will be bolstered by the 165 students in the Gamecock Gateway’s inaugural class.
Students in the Gateway program will study at Midlands Technical College this year; if they complete 30 hours there with a 2.25 GPA, they’ll be eligible to transfer into the class of 2016 next year.
The program’s start follows USC President Harris Pastides’ promise last fall that the university would not grow its incoming classes further.
They’d grown enough, he told The Daily Gamecock then; housing was packed, facilities were overwhelmed and the student-to-faculty ratio was among the highest in the Southeastern Conference.
It was time to reinvest in USC’s infrastructure and tend to its growing pains, he said.
But Pastides said he isn’t worried about the potential for growth next year.
“The modest addition to the size of the sophomore class is easy to absorb, and one which we welcome,” he wrote in an email response Wednesday.
On campus, the Gateway students will live in the Roost with a handful of others.
As of Thursday morning, the 165 will live with two students who requested the dorm, eight or so transfers, eight staff members and a handful of others who have had roommate issues, according to Housing Director Kirsten Kennedy.
Dennis Pruitt, vice president for student affairs, said the pinch on campus wasn’t in housing, but in lab space, which Midlands Tech has plenty of.
“There is sufficient housing for freshmen on campus, and sufficient housing for upper-class students off campus,” Pruitt wrote in an email.
Plus, Pruitt added, the Roost has historically had the lowest housing request rate on campus.
How many Gateway students eventually matriculate fully into USC depends on their performance in the coming year, but the program isn’t likely to grow much in the next few years, administrators say.
Provost Michael Amiridis said he wasn’t sure where the program’s growth would be capped, saying USC will wait to see how the first few years go.
“Whether the cap’s going to be 200, 300 — I really don’t know,” Amiridis said. “I think to some extent we want to see how it goes. We want to see how many of these students will make it through the first year.”
The Roost can only house about 200, according to the University Housing website. Where any overflow of students would live isn’t immediately clear.
“We have a need for even more housing for our home students, our own freshmen ... so we don’t have the capacity to radically expand the Gateway program,” Pastides said in an earlier interview.
But as the program matures and if demands grows, Pastides said the university would work to accommodate it.
“If a good percentage of them make the leap productively and the demand continues to grow,” he added, “we’ll certainly look to see how we can expand the program.”