2008 Woodie Awards
Increases too much at once
Editorial Board
Issue date: 4/9/08 Section: Opinion & Editorial
The Issue:
The cost of attending SDSU will increase by a substantial amount for the 2008-09 school year.
Our View:
With the economy in a recession and the costs of everything going up, it would have been nice of the university and the Board of Regents to make these increasing costs to students more gradual.
At the end of March, the South Dakota Board of Regents set the tuition and fees cost for the upcoming school year. Their increases--a 5.9 percent increase in tuition and fees along with an extra 2 percent increase in fees for science and laboratory upgrades-increasing the cost of attending SDSU.
For an undergraduate S.D. resident taking 16 credits a semester, this raises the cost from $2,864 (the average tuition and fees cost per semester for the 2007-08 school year) to about $3,090. The increase in tuition and fees from the 2006-07 year to this year was 6.2 percent - still the highest tuition and fees increase when compared to surrounding states, including Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming.
The impending 7.9 percent increase is not the end of the rising costs. There will also be a 4.3 to 4.4 percent increase in residence hall costs. In addition, there is a planned 2.8 percent increase in meal plan prices. The average residence hall dweller will pay at least $600 to $700 more this coming year because of all the fee increases.
The BOR says these increases will cover inflation, the cost of operating the institutions and to support rising minimum wage and utility costs, as well as salary policies that attempt to make SDSU faculty salaries more competitive.
SDSU does have a problem with being competitive in drawing in new faculty members and rewarding teachers who do their job well. We need to compete in a national market in recruiting new, intelligent people to SDSU. For example, according to statistics from March 2007, salaries of faculty and exempt staff in South Dakota (a full professor at SDSU earned an average of $70,372 this year) trailed those in surrounding states at a rate of 5.59 percent and nationally at the rate of 25.3 percent.
The cost of attending SDSU will increase by a substantial amount for the 2008-09 school year.
Our View:
With the economy in a recession and the costs of everything going up, it would have been nice of the university and the Board of Regents to make these increasing costs to students more gradual.
At the end of March, the South Dakota Board of Regents set the tuition and fees cost for the upcoming school year. Their increases--a 5.9 percent increase in tuition and fees along with an extra 2 percent increase in fees for science and laboratory upgrades-increasing the cost of attending SDSU.
For an undergraduate S.D. resident taking 16 credits a semester, this raises the cost from $2,864 (the average tuition and fees cost per semester for the 2007-08 school year) to about $3,090. The increase in tuition and fees from the 2006-07 year to this year was 6.2 percent - still the highest tuition and fees increase when compared to surrounding states, including Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming.
The impending 7.9 percent increase is not the end of the rising costs. There will also be a 4.3 to 4.4 percent increase in residence hall costs. In addition, there is a planned 2.8 percent increase in meal plan prices. The average residence hall dweller will pay at least $600 to $700 more this coming year because of all the fee increases.
The BOR says these increases will cover inflation, the cost of operating the institutions and to support rising minimum wage and utility costs, as well as salary policies that attempt to make SDSU faculty salaries more competitive.
SDSU does have a problem with being competitive in drawing in new faculty members and rewarding teachers who do their job well. We need to compete in a national market in recruiting new, intelligent people to SDSU. For example, according to statistics from March 2007, salaries of faculty and exempt staff in South Dakota (a full professor at SDSU earned an average of $70,372 this year) trailed those in surrounding states at a rate of 5.59 percent and nationally at the rate of 25.3 percent.
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