Welcome to 2025! We're looking forward to an exciting year for the South Carolina Technical College System. We're off to a good start, with about a 5 % enrollment growth for the Spring 2025 semester at our 16 technical colleges across the state. So we're excited about this coming year!

The state of South Carolina, though, is changing. We have about 200,000 people that have moved to our state in the last two years. That's a good thing for our state to have all these many retirees that are interested in enjoying the beauty of our state, from the mountains to the seas. But it also brings a responsibility for us as a technical college system. Many of these retirees are over 65. And one of the things that comes with that is the need for them to have a highly qualified nurse or health care professional. That's where the technical college system steps in and provides that highly skilled workforce to take care of the needs of these new people coming to the state, as well as our long-time residents. We're up to about 5.3 million people that live in the state of South Carolina, so it is a great responsibility for us to have those health care professionals across the state.

Along with residents moving into the state, we have many industries. Right now, we have about 14,000 jobs that need to be filled in about 60 industries that have been announced coming to the state of South Carolina. Our technical colleges and our readySC division of the technical college system will provide that highly skilled workforce to enable these companies to be successful in the coming years. We're looking forward to meeting the needs of the residents, but also the business community at the same time.

And while we're a part of that higher education community in the state of South Carolina, rather than viewing ourselves as being part of higher education, we really tend to look at it as being in the business of providing quality of life for the citizens of the state. Our citizens want a good job in their local community, and the technical college system is geared around being able to provide that opportunity for a good job here in the state of South Carolina.

We're looking forward to this being an exciting year for us. 2025 is going to see a lot of growth for us as a state. And the technical college system will be an important part of that move forward for our state.

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