As we learn from the discussion between legislators and Regents at the Board of Regents meeting in Madison this week, sensible policymakers understand that the major issue in retaining and graduating students in our public universities is not the Governor’s huff-and-puff about diversity and indoctrination but cold hard cash and how much of it students have to pay:
[Rep. Tony Venhuizen] says affordability is the most important issue in college education, and adds that the three-year tuition freeze and other scholarships, such as the recently created “Freedom Scholarship,” have helped.
“The legislature wants to work with them to keep moving in the right direction on affordability, on access to education, developing our workforce. I mean, we’re lucky in this state, we have a governor and a legislature and a board of regents who I think are all moving in that same direction and see that as the priority,” Venhuizen said.
“I think that the colleges can continue to get better in the areas of graduation rates, in the areas of affordability. I mean, there’s work that we can continue to do. I think that The Regents leadership is keenly aware of these. I think they’re moving in the right direction,” [Rep. Will] Mortenson said [Carter Schmidt, “Lawmakers Discuss Challenges, Opportunities with SDBOR After Recent Criticism,” KELO-TV, 2023.06.22].
The Board of Regents generally recognizes the primary importance of cost to students. Its staff is proposing a tuition freeze for next year. But one of the Governor’s new Regents wants to make college credit more expensive for ambitious high schoolers:
One of the board’s new members, Jim Lochner of Dakota Dunes, said the dual-credit system needed to be studied. He suggested that students could pay more.
Replied [SDBOR VP finance/admin Heather] Forney, “There are some students that are economically disadvantaged.”
Responded Lochner, “I mean, it’s not even a tank of gas in a (Ford) F-150” [Bob Mercer, “Regents Staff Wants Tuition Freeze at Public Universities,” KELO-TV, 2023.06.22].
Yes, it’s always nice to have the perspective of someone who lives in a gated golf course community telling South Dakota families how easily they can afford higher tuition.
I begin to like this Lochner fellow. Maybe he can counterbalance the moderates and blue dogs like Messrs. Rave and Partridge.
No free lunch, somebody has to pay for what you eat or learn.
Really grudz? No free lunch? How much have you contributed to paying for the platform this blog provides you? Asking for a friend.
Let grudznkic tell you, Jack, that is none of your business, and every time I use the magic money transfer machine I am sure to tell Mr. H just how swell he is.
Mr. Rave claims that there is not political activism seeping in the colleges under the is watch and that of Mr. Partridge. What is wrong with political activism at the colleges, asks grudznick?
The problem is Mr. Rave is allowing only liberal political activism to seep in and permeate the culture of the campus, and will not allow the balancing conservative and common sense activism to offset it. Let us up this Mr. Lochner fellow can help offset the leftist leanings of Messrs. Rave and Partridge.
Mr. Schriever, you would be way ahead of the game by ignoring the thing that calls itself “grudznick.”
There is nothing at all wrong with political activism at colleges grudz, In fact, contrary to the Noem ideo-theocracy propaganda machine’s assertion, political activism at colleges is an encouraging sign of a healthy democracy. Universities were in their origins never, and still should not be intended for the purpose they keep touting as a state-sponsored training system for “careers” that produce anyone’s tater gravy lunches. Rather, they were and should continue to be state sponsored places for the free expression of and reasoned debate over all ideas. Apprenticeships are where one learns career skills. Universities are where one learns to formulate and defend hypotheses.
Wasn’t Jan 6 reason enough not to allow conservative activism anywhere in America? Tourists my ass.
The regents grasp of two issues concerning higher education; student finances, and the cost of higher education – begs consideration of a third issue. The third issue is the demographic hole of college aged folks that will last for a generation. The only way to stabilize or – the taller goal to increase enrollment – is through immigration. The regents need to face up to the issue of the likely either – or situation. Either stabilize enrollment, or withdraw programs and perhaps close a college(s). The regents have an opportunity to get ahead of and prevent the train wreck; but will likely take the cowardly bureaucratic approach to merely clean up after the wreck. [South Dakota’s self-defeating abortion restrictions which reduces women and thinking men and facility from attending state universities is outside the regent’s control.]
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/17/why-more-and-more-colleges-are-closing-down-across-the-us.html
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/01/19/more-colleges-will-likely-face-closure-2023-experts-say
We may be looking in the wrong direction, watching these jazz hands perform while Hillsdale is predating on our only hope of escaping our self-imposed innovation desert.
How are 66 county seats and their bureaucracies either conservative or sustainable? They’re not; but, it’s the way Republican cronyism and patronage built barricades to democracy by providing benefits of the public dole to those who say they deplore big gubmint in a state that hates poor people.
grudznick loves it when my close personal friend Lar talks like that. 66 counties is insaner than all get out, like some east coast libbie state. How are 169 school districts with more than 169 fat cat administrators conservative? We need 25 counties, and 34 school districts. Submissions are being taken now for the new West River county names
Low tuition is a good thing for students, or is it? There comes a point where low tuition may cost students in the quality of the education they receive. If all a student is after is a B.S. credential, I suppose the lower the price the better. But what if your goal is to learn as much as possible and to be challenged by and to challenge the best minds in various fields of study? Certainly, if you want to go on to graduate education, your going to need profs who are really good. At some point low tuition, if it does not come married with other policies that allow you to compete for the best profs, prevents you from delivering a good education to students.
And it’s not just profs. Students learn from other students, too. If you are buying low tuition by ignoring things that attract a diverse student body, you are shortchanging all students.