Students will help offset about half of the $6.5-million cut to the Board of Regents’ budget.
The higher education authority raised student tuition and mandatory fees as a result of another year of reductions in state funding.
Though the 4.6-percent increase is less than the 5.7-percent hike students saw last year and the smallest increase in 10 years, the increases made at Thursday’s meeting would have been smaller if not for state lawmaker’s decision to put 62 percent of the total state cuts on the back of the BOR, Jack Warner, BOR executive director and CEO, said in a press release issued Thursday.
In the same release, Regents President Terry Baloun said despite the tuition and fee increase, the BOR is still left to deal with sizable funding reduction.
“Our public universities will absorb the remainder of the system-wide cuts, about $3.5 million worth, by reducing services or eliminating programs,” Baloun said.
The BOR officials expect the tuition and fee increase to result in students paying $312 more for school than they paid this year. The average undergraduate student from South Dakota taking 32 credit hours will pay $7,076.63 for the year.
Warner said it’s not the BOR’s intention to force students to foot the bill for the cuts.
“The board … feels strongly that our budget should not be balanced on the backs of students and their families,” he said.
Reach reporter Joe Sneve at Joe.Sneve@usd.edu.
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