A college scholarship program that benefits some of the brightest yet neediest South Carolina students is making a $40 million expansion into Spartanburg County.
For the first time starting this year, the Charleston-based Meeting Street Scholarship Fund will accept applications from students who attend one of Spartanburg County’s nine public high schools and plan next fall to enter one of South Carolina’s 18 leading colleges. These include Furman, Anderson, Clemson, Wofford, and College of Charleston.
About 200 students will qualify for up to $40,000 over a four-year period, said Josh Bell, president of Beemok Education, which administers the scholarship program.
After all forms of state, federal, private, and institutional aid are added up, most students still face about $12,000 a year that they must pay out of pocket, Bell told a capacity crowd on Nov. 14 at the Chapman Cultural Center in downtown Spartanburg.
Such a funding gap might just as well be “a million dollars” to low-income students, Bell said. “This is a game changer,” he said.
The expansion is possible through a five-year, $40 million commitment from Spartanburg philanthropists George and Susu Johnson.
The Meeting Street fund provides up to $10,000 annually to students who qualify for the state’s LIFE scholarship and earn a federal Pell Grant.
Spartanburg native George Johnson and his wife, Susan Phifer “Susu” Johnson, have been leading the business, educational and cultural development of their city since George Johnson was elected to the state House barely out of law school in 1969.
He launched Johnson Development Associates in 1986, which helped secure 1,200 acres for BMW in 1992 and maintains an enormous national portfolio of storage, industrial and apartment properties today.
He ran the largest Blockbuster Video franchise in the country until 1994 and later co-founded Extended Stay America and Advance America Cash Advance.
The Johnsons’ impact on the city of Spartanburg has been transformational. In the 2000s, George Johnson moved the headquarters of Extended Stay to Morgan Square and contributed $6 million to the construction of the USC-Upstate business school, which bears his name (“The George”).
In 2012, Susu Johnson, a former Spartanburg City Councilwoman, helped bring the Meeting Street Academy to Broad Street, and she and her husband opened a private gallery on Morgan Square for their 1,400-piece Southern art collection in 2021. The Johnson Group is currently building a $425 million minor-league stadium and office complex downtown.
In the audience at Chapman on Nov. 14 were more than 100 high school seniors invited to the event from area schools and likely eligible because of their high academic achievement and financial need. Among them was Spartanburg High senior Alexander Tufino, on track to graduate next spring with a diploma and an associate’s degree from Spartanburg Community College.
Tufino’s mother is a custodian at Spartanburg High, and his father works two jobs as a cook. Tufino has two older siblings who have worked their way through Spartanburg Community College. He intends to major in political science at the University of South Carolina and wants to be an immigration lawyer someday.
“Words cannot express the feeling of this opportunity,” Tufino said.
When he attended Wofford College in the 1960s, tuition, room and board was $1,800, George Johnson said.
“We don’t want these young people to acquire a lot of debt, and a lot of them might abandon the dream of going to college,” Johnson said. “And we think if you provide this scholarship to proven scholars, it gives them a chance.”
Susu Johnson said she knows her own children had a head start financially, and she wants every child to have a chance at attending college if that’s what they want to do. The Johnsons and their two grown children all graduated from public schools, and the couple said they support but also want to reform public education.
“I think the value of being in the public school system is you get to know all kinds of people,” Susu Johnson said. “I mean, it just makes you more socially nimble in the world.”
Joining the Johnsons at the scholarship announcement was businessman Ben Navarro, a Rhode Island native who moved to Charleston in 2004. His global investment company, Sherman Financial Group, owns Las Vegas-based Credit One Bank, and he has personally invested millions of dollars through his Beemok Family Foundation to education projects such as the Meeting Street Schools, which he launched with his wife Kelly in 2008, and the Meeting Street Scholarship Fund.
“The Navarros and the Johnsons have a firm belief that no one deserves a guarantee in life but that everyone deserves an opportunity to accomplish their version of the American dream,” Navarro said.
After a visit to the Meeting Street Academy in Charleston about 15 years ago, the Johnsons helped open another campus in downtown Spartanburg. That school operates out of the former Broadway mall building that George Johnson owns and leases to the school for a minimal, undisclosed amount.
Officials at Clemson University and the College of Charleston have stated they will cover any student expenses that remain after Meeting Street scholarship recipients enroll. These include student fees and costs for housing and food.
The College of Charleston called it the “Meeting Street Charleston Compact,” and it will start in the fall of 2025. Scholarship recipients at Clemson and the college do not have to fill out additional applications; their expenses are automatically covered, according to statements from both institutions.
The College of Charleston’s leadership hopes this effort will draw more of these students to the school and to Charleston as the place to launch their careers, said Jimmy Foster, vice president of enrollment planning.
The scholarship’s expansion to Spartanburg adds a 13th county on the way to the fund’s goal of offering scholarships to low-income students in all 46 of South Carolina’s counties.
The scholarship’s annual amount — $10,000 — was derived from two statistics. The average student loan debt in South Carolina is $37,260, according to the Meeting Street Scholarship Fund, and the average out-of-pocket cost for students attending a public college in South Carolina is about $12,000 annually.
Within the 13 counties where the scholarship is offered, there is no limit on the number of students who can apply.