Regents prioritize tuition freeze, civics & quantum computing in 2025 budget request

The South Dakota Board of Regents will ask Gov. Kristi Noem and the Legislature to freeze public university tuition for a fourth year in a row, the organization decided in a special Zoom meeting Wednesday, in addition to requesting funds for other priorities such as a system-wide center for civic engagement.

Noem has been a staunch advocate of expanding civics and government education for years, and supported the controversial new social studies standards approved by the state Board of Education Standards earlier this year.

The tuition freeze, designed to keep South Dakota universities affordable and competitive compared to other schools in the region, would cost state government roughly $4.3 million.

Regent Jeff Partridge said the tuition freeze is the board’s number one priority for the year. The civic engagement center was initially identified as a “Tier 1” priority before getting knocked down to “Tier 2” due to a lack of consensus among regents.

During the discussion, Regent Doug Morrison said Noem’s willingness to support the regents’ tuition freeze and other priorities made it “incumbent that we come up with the next big thing.”

“I think she’d like to see something in the area of civics or history that can be delivered across the whole system,” Morrison said.

The civic engagement center request includes just over $880,000 and three full-time hires. Both Black Hills State University in Spearfish and Northern State University in Aberdeen submitted proposals to establish a center, but the board’s proposed budget goes beyond the $300,000 and $200,000 requested, respectively.

BHSU might already have created a Center for American Exceptionalism had a bill to establish it passed the Legislature last session. The bill, which failed by one vote in the House, would have established a center to curate supplemental curriculum on American history and civics education for state schools. It also would have developed college courses comparing communist and socialist countries to Western-style democratic countries, and comparing command-style socialist economies to free-market capitalist economies throughout history. 

NSU has had its own Center for Public History and Civic Engagement since 2021, focused primarily on public history education.

The new center, if approved, will be a joint effort by the universities focused on system-wide government education and engagement along with instruction on how to debate, argue and interact in today’s political climate, Partridge said, though the board isn’t finished with “every last detail.” NSU and BHSU will collaborate on the details, he added.

Other priorities listed by the Board of Regents include increasing funding for BHSU and its School of Business by $925,406 and five full-time employees; increasing dual credit funding (for high schoolers earning college credits) by $147,547; using one-time funding to expand the Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway by $624,066; using one-time funding to pay construction and maintenance costs at a request of $10.78 million; and using one-time funding of $6 million to create a Center for Quantum Information Science and Technology.

The quantum center would use an existing facility at an undecided location to engage in quantum computing, which Partridge described as “the next big thing.” A quantum computer uses quantum mechanics to make calculations faster than current supercomputers.

South Dakota recently closed the 2023 budget year with a $96.8 million surplus. The regents plan to request $17.4 million in one-time funding, which equates to about 18% of the surplus. The organization plans to request another $6.28 million in ongoing funding from the Legislature.

The state’s public schools are funded by the state and federal government along with student tuition and fees.