Starting in fall 2024, Minnesota families making under $80K a year can send their kids to Minnesota colleges for free. The North Star Promise Scholarship Program, approved by the Minnesota Legislature and signed into law by Governor Tim Walz in May, will cover any in-state tuition and fees not covered by scholarships or other financial aid at Minnesota’s public universities and colleges and tribal colleges. Recipients have to keep their grades up (generally, “Satisfactory Academic Progress” means keeping a cumulative GPA of 2.0 and earning two-thirds of the credits one attempts) and be enrolled in a program that leads to a degree. North Star Promise will cover tuition and fees for up to 120 credits.
15,000 to 20,000 Minnesotans may qualify for the North Star Promise each year. North Dakota’s higher education system figures 1,400 of those eligible Minnesotans may be going to North Dakota schools right now, and the prospect of this price competition has North Dakota freaking out:
“This has catastrophic implications,” said David Cook, North Dakota State University’s president, at a recent State Board of Higher Education meeting. “This is a very serious situation for us.”
Minnesota students make up close to half the student body at North Dakota State in Fargo, their No. 1 out-of-state pick in their first year. They accounted for nearly 40% of the first-year students at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks and North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton in fall 2021.
“Probably half of our football team comes from Minnesota, so that’s kind of a big deal to us,” College of Science President Rod Flanigan said [Jack Dura and Steve Karnowski, “North Dakota University Leaders Fear ‘Catastrophic Implications’ of Minnesota’s New Free Tuition Plan,” AP, 2023.07.02].
In Fiscal Year 2023, the South Dakota Board of Regents reported that Minnesota had the highest undergraduate resident tuition in the region, $2,310 more than North Dakota’s and $2,237 more than South Dakota’s. Total resident university costs, including room and board, were also highest in Minnesota.
Minnesota students made up nearly 14% of enrollment in South Dakota’s public universities in fall 2019. If even a third of our universities’ Minnesota students qualify for the North Star Promise, that’s over a thousand students to whom Minnesota can make a really compelling sales pitch to come home for a cheaper degree.
Maybe South Dakota’s Regents and lawmakers need to take up the concern we’re hearing to our north and figure out a way to help South Dakota compete with Minnesota’s free tuition come fall 2024.
Has there ever been a more compelling argument for young parents to quietly and demonstrably become citizens of the progressive state of MinnySota? Nope. Hizzah, Governor Walz.
The news from Minnesota is amazing.
North and South Dakota have too many four year colleges and need to downsize. Wyoming does fine with one four year college and so could the Dakotas.
The SD Board of Regents haven’t read the demographic pyramid and seen the generation-sized demographic hole of college-aged folks. At least North Dakota is beginning its homework in the problem identification phase.
This is bad news indeed. Those woke Regent fellows, the Messrs. Rave and Partridge, will now want South Dakota taxpayers to pony up even more money for kids to get free educations their parents should be paying for. Or that Mr. President Uncle Joe Biden will try to foist onto the backs of taxpayers who don’t have college kids.
Mr. John is right. Time to close BHSU and NSU.
“Probably half of our football team comes from Minnesota, so that’s kind of a big deal to us,” College of Science President Rod Flanigan said [Jack Dura and Steve Karnowski, “
Oh the humanity !!!
Haha, this is free enterprise style price cutting. SD and ND now need to match or do better. This, CRT rampage, and strict anti abortion laws probably aren’t helping to keep kids in the state. Now whatchya gonna do Governor?
The only town in Minnesota worth living in is Duluth and winters there are only slightly worse than Aberdeen’s.
Love it. It’s got to be difficult to hate on MN’s love fest. MN’s progress really accentuates SD’s shortcomings. The better MN does, the higher the pressure will be on SD to de-stagnate and move forward. That would be what would make sense. Yet, an article I read about NE overcoming their rural internet obstacles by innovative use of satellite balloons for signal, while SD’s response to the same setback was to just, “Whine”, we might find our leaders’ big counter move to be to sit and pout while MN dusts us.
Governor Walz is one of the outstanding Liberals in America. The Legislature has a Democratic majority in both Houses and Minnesota is booming. Good jobs are plentiful for recent college graduates from Liberal Arts schools. South Dakota by comparison is on the dark side of the moon.
Hey Larry, there are a lot of nice towns in MN to live in, what are you talking about? Red Wing, Winona, Rochester, New Ulm, Lanesboro, Northfield in the southern part to name a few. Up North is decidedly more scenic if you can stand the mosquitos.
MN has got it going on if you still want to believe in America. The Northstar scholarship Program the DFL has put into place makes me happy that now, for the first time in decades, poor and middle class students can attend and graduate University without being in a s##tload of debt. Never and I mean never, would SD ever pass anything like this.
In 1969, when I started school at USD, I had saved enough $$ from my little farming enterprise (16 acres of beans) to be able to pay my own room, board tuition and books. In the 3 ensuing years, I was able to make those payments from my Summer employment gigs. My parents paying for any part of it NEVER entered the picture grudz. Do you know why I was able to do that? State and Federal funding for higher education was primarily paid DIRECTLY to the educational institutions, not as “loans” to students who then passed it through to those institutions. I.E., banker lobbyists had bought their way into middle of the deal, while contributing NOTHING to any of the other parties involved. This mostly happened under the Reagan/Gingrich/Tea Party (I believe you are a charter member – no grudz?) cabal’s reign of destruction of the middle class in this country. This is the same approach that Reagan used when “privatizing” California’s metal health care system. All it really accomplished was increases in the wealth of the already wealthy. Every other affected party simply took on more debt, neglect and suffering. One more brick in the wall of why Reagan remains, the worst president ever.
Nobody trusts the colleges, anymore, Mr. Schriever. If more state and federal funding were passed through to those “institutions” they would just gobble it up for fatcat administrators and high-brow, long-haired hippy instructors. The kids would just have to be even more.
FREE! Nothing is free! Either the tax payer’s of Minnesota will pay it and or the student’s of North Dakota and South Dakota will pay with higher tuition! Walz is such an idiot! I didn’t vote for him and I don’t know why people did!
Hi, Jenny. I love New Mexico and insist on living in or near a college town like Santa Fe. Duluth is gorgeous and my oldest daughter lives in Minneapolis.
Mike Sanborn left Kansas because it’s too liberal and South Dakota is the conservative hole he can burrow into.
Hmmm… $117M to start, then $49.5M each year… with a budget surplus of $17.5B, it sounds like Governor Walz and the Legislature have enough extra cash on hand to fund this program and still send taxpayers rebate checks totaling $1.1B. Then add the two waves of economic stimulus you’ll get: first, the Minnesota students who’ve been taking their university dollars out of state turning around and investing that money in their local schools and communities; second, those students and thousands more who couldn’t afford to go to university otherwise getting degrees, going out into the workforce, and making and spending $22K more a year than folks with no college education in Minnesota.
Gee, investing in education to keep more students in state and produce more graduates with higher earning and taxpaying potential doesn’t sound idiotic to me.
I just heard on the nightly news that one in six Minnesota school children
was considered underfed. How could this happen in a heaven on earth
place like Minnesota? I heard this on WDAY TV in Fargo.
Thus the need for free school lunches in Minnesota.
Kevin, young fella. I wonder who’s the real idiot. Hmmm? You see, Einstein. if the students pay nothing and you pay taxes to cover the costs then the costs were literally free to the students. Thus some things are actually free to some people.
Try again, Oppenheimer.
Consult this are a good, albeit sideways interactive look at our national demographics.
gift article, maybe paywall: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/aging-america-retirees-workforce-economy/
Immigration is the only solution. Virtually no immigration will come from the pasts sources in Europe. Old folks and republicants need to broaden their minds about what it means and what it takes to be American.
Free enterprise Taliban south whitekota loses again to SMART Minnesota!
College debt, that’s a Republican thing.
Sow Dakota, only 2 parties, the White Party 90% of the Kegislature passing Trumpist policies after the failed Beer Hall putsch of 2021 failed. The weak Party, formerly known as D, Orinces music much better! And the Weak Party always supports the White Party.
The only Party that gets things done is We the People using initiatives to pass good laws!
“Probably half of our football team comes from Minnesota, so that’s kind of a big deal to us,” College of Science President Rod Flanigan said [Jack Dura and Steve Karnowski, “
It’s hypocrisy that North Dakota would freak out over the futbol team . . . since aren’t they all on “scholarships”?
It’s more likely a concern that the entire team may be dating the same girl who is also the only cheerleader.