Dakota State Led State in Enrollment Gain in 1980–1981

While covering the continuing corporate/computer co-optation of Dakota State University, that Sioux Falls paper proferred this historical nugget about Madison’s Regental campus:

It wasn’t always a college focused on technology.

The school opened in 1881 as a teacher’s college. A century later, the university was struggling to stand out among other state colleges, enrollment was dropping, and the Legislature had attempted to close the college.

Then-Gov. Bill Janklow recognized DSU’s struggles and worked with the Board of Regents to change the mission of DSU. In 1984, DSU’s new mission was specializing in computer-related programs [Megan Raposa, “Sanford, Beacom Donate $30 Million to Dakota State University,” that Sioux Falls paper, 2017.08.20].

Proud Dakota State College alumnus and Orland organic agriculturalist Charlie Johnson questions the assertion of falling enrollment by digging up these Regental enrollment stats reported in February 1981:

DSC certainly wasn’t the biggest campus, but in the 1980–1981 school year, three years before the Legislature approved Governor Bill Janklow’s conversion of the liberal-arts campus into a prep school for the new Citibank cube farm, DSC posted the biggest enrollment gain by percentage in the state.

Now, can any of you readers track down the Regental enrollment data for the subsequent school years?

Update 19:43 CDT: Charlie Johnson’s historical point withstands broader scrutiny. The Board of Regents Higher Education Enrollment Information for Fall 1990 (a copy of which rests here in the Beulah Williams Library of Northern State University) includes this bar chart of public FTE enrollments in fall semesters from 1973 to 1990:

DSC’s enrollment is the second block from the bottom in each bar. DSC’s fall enrollment looked pretty peaked in the 1970s, then bulked up in the early 1980s until Janklow’s computer mission change drove enrollment back down from 1984 through 1987.

Dr. Ernest Teagarden, General Beadle/DSC/DSU professor emeritus of business, provides numbers in his 2006 essay in DSU’s quasquicentennial promotional publication:

Enrollment increased during the [DSC President Dr. Carl] Opgaard years from 895 students in 1979 to 1,246 students in 1983. Both figures are, of course, headcounts and probably have to be adjusted if full-time equivalencies are desired. The enrollment increase indicated that parents and their teenage offspring had decided that DSC was not to be closed.

Despite its enrollment increases the collegiate position of DSC was not permanently settled. In the late winter of 1983 Governor William Janklow appeared on the academic scene in Madison. He addressed a selected group of Lake County citizens and proposed the conversion of DSC to a “computer school” (or words to this effect)….

…It was unfortunate that the “new mission” could not have been developed more openly and over a longer period of time. A look at fall student headcount (the number of students taking at least one credit during the semester) in 1983 and the following three years is in order: 1983—1,246 headcount; 1984—999 headcount; 1985—867 headcount; 1986—940 headcount [Dr. Ernest Teagarden, Chapter 4, “Mission Change and Recent History,” Keeping the Edge…, DSU/Leader Printing: Madison, SD, 2006, pp. 35 & 38].

There were questions about the ongoing viability of Dakota State College as a liberal arts/teacher-preparation college well before the 1980s. But to say that decreasing enrollment was a pressing problem at the time of the Janklow computer mission change in 1984 is historically inaccurate.