South Dakota Board of Regents want to prioritize tuition freeze, dual credit and civics for 2025
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The South Dakota Board of Regents officially decided Wednesday afternoon which of the budget requests they heard from university presidents in June will move forward as a recommendation to Gov. Kristi Noem for consideration in her December budget address.
Regents prioritized another tuition freeze, funding for dual credit, retiring some debt and quantum computing are the items they hope will be on Noem’s recommended state budget for fiscal year 2025.
Once Noem presents that budget to the Legislature, lawmakers will work on it in January through March next year. The budget begins July 1, 2024 and runs through June 30, 2025.
Secondary priorities included a base funding gap for Black Hills State University, funding civics initiatives for the university system and funding another cohort of teacher apprenticeships.
Here’s how the Board of Regents made those decisions.
Priorities can’t be ‘way out ahead of our skis’
After conversations with stakeholders, Regent Jeff Partridge said it’s fair to say the budget the BOR considered Wednesday is going to be tighter than it’s been in recent years, and the requests would be somewhat less than they have been in years past, too.
“We want to be careful not to ask for budget items that are way out ahead of our skis,” Partridge said. “We have the boots-on-the-ground knowledge of, ‘This is our priority.’”
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There was broad consensus from stakeholders across the state that a tuition freeze was the top priority for ongoing funding requests, Partridge said, and the BOR requested one of $4,330,920 based on a proposed 3% inflationary increase assuming the budgets haven’t changed. That number could be refined through the legislative process.
Regent Pam Roberts said she’d heard from university presidents, the general public and university students that a tuition freeze was a priority to them, too.
Regent Jim Lochner said he wasn’t opposed to the tuition freeze, but at some point, the BOR will need to come up with a cost savings plan to offset it.
The other top priority for ongoing funding was for dual credit. Initially the board office estimated this request at $3,278,200, but Partridge proposed, and Regents voted upon, the request for funding being $147,547 from the BOR after conversations and agreement with the executive branch that remainder of the cost of dual credit should be covered by the Department of Education.
A top priority for one-time funding requests was a “South Dakota Center for Quantum Information Science and Technology” at Dakota State University, South Dakota Mines, South Dakota State University and the University of South Dakota. The BOR office had estimated this request at $2 million with four full-time employees, but Regents voted to make this request $6,032,685 with five full-time employees.
Partridge said quantum computing was “one of our economic diversifiers” in South Dakota.
The other top priority for one-time funding requests was $10,778,927 to retire some debt the system has from the Higher Education Facilities Fund. Regent Randy Frederick said any amount will do from the Legislature, comparing the need to a dustpan for which the Regents would “take any scraps you have.”
Civics initiative sees the most board discussion
One hot topic of discussion during Wednesday’s meeting was the request from both BHSU and Northern State University to fund civics centers at both universities. In June, BHSU had requested support but not a specific dollar amount, and NSU had requested $204,500 in staffing and operating costs. The board office had estimated BHSU’s costs at $300,000.
Regents voted to increase the funding for both centers, and a statewide civics initiative for all six public universities, to $880,096 in ongoing funding, including three full-time employees — a director and two curriculum specialists. However, the discussion of exactly what this civics initiative will look like remained nebulous Wednesday.
Noem has identified this as an area of interest, Partridge said, along with other stakeholders who have wondered what’s going on in South Dakota’s universities based on what they’ve seen going on nationwide.
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What NSU and BHSU have proposed so far is some sort of center, institute or collaborative for civics or civic engagement, and the greater study thereof, Partridge explained. He said Regents and other stakeholders have also discussed not having physical centers at those campuses, but rather a civics initiative for all six campuses that looks at engaging people in the nation’s form of government and developing a better and greater degree of advocacy.
“It just seems like that’s lacking, and people have talked about that being missing in our broad culture throughout the U.S.,” Partridge said, noting not every detail is quite finished, and that the university system would task NSU and BHSU with that.
The intent of the initiative is to develop content and create opportunities students could participate in, such as workshops, modules and components that could be baked into the curriculum further down the road, BOR executive director and CEO Nathan Lukkes said.
More: Lawmakers could give Black Hills State power to create 'American exceptionalism' curriculum
Other secondary priorities included a $926,406 ongoing funding request for BHSU’s base funding gap, and $624,066 towards DSU’s teacher apprenticeship pathway. Both of those items had originally been recommended by the BOR office as $3 million, but Regents voted on the lower dollar amounts.
What’s off the table?
Items the universities and board office proposed to the Regents in June, but not taken up as primary or secondary priorities by the Regents on Wednesday, included the following:
A request from both SDSU and SD Mines for $650,000 and 4.3 full time employees each in ongoing funding for a new partnership on bioproducts research.
An ongoing $665,000 and 5.8 full time employee request from USD for a telehealth collaborative.
$5 million in one-time funding, and $900,000 in ongoing funding, for a biomedical computational collaborative between USD, its medical school, and SD Mines.
An ongoing $1,248,951 million request from SDSU to include its agricultural experiment station facilities in the state’s maintenance and repair calculation.
A one-time request of $4 million from SD Mines for a patent fund.
A one-time request of $1.2 million from SDSU to cover rising construction costs on the Cottonwood Research Facility.
A one-time request of $20 million from USD to demolish the Akeley-Lawrence Science Center and replace it with a new interdisciplinary data sciences building.
A one-time request of $3 million from NSU to replace Lincoln Hall.
This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: South Dakota Board of Regents prepare budget priorities for 2025
