(The Center Square) – The South Dakota Board of Regents agreed Wednesday that freezing tuition for public higher education should be their number one budget priority presented to the governor for fiscal year 2025.
The tuition freeze would cost South Dakota taxpayers an estimated $4.3 million, according to the funding request.
The board was tasked with considering a total of $64.5 million worth of funding requests, $15.5 million in base funding requests and $48.9 million in requests for one-time funding. The tuition freeze was among the base funding requests, which would be a part of the ongoing budget.
The board must review all the requests and finalize recommendations to be submitted to Gov. Kristi Noem’s budget office by the end of August.
Board members were broadly in favor of putting the tuition freeze request front and center.
“I absolutely agree with this as a number one priority,” said Regent Pam Roberts. “I’ve heard it from not only fellow regents and staff and presidents but also the general public and students, so hopefully we can proceed with this.”
But Regent James Lochner, while not disagreeing with the consensus, said consideration should be given to how they would offset the cost down the road.
“I’m not opposed, but at some point, we all know that we’re going to come up with some cost savings to offset this or it’s going to continue. The state’s going to continue to fund more,” said Lochner, adding that at some point, “we’re going to have to deal with that.”
In general, Vice President Jeff Partridge said he anticipates the budget for fiscal year 2025 will be tighter than it has been in recent years.
“The one question that always comes up that’s really a very easy and good question is, ‘I’d like to know how much we can spend and then I’ll tell you what my priority is.’ And frankly, we don’t know either of those when we get into this,” said Partridge. “So we work on the idea that there’s going to be a recommended budget, but that’s based on recommended revenue targets that is based on the economy and revenue collection in the state of South Dakota.”
In light of the uncertainty of what the final budget would look like, Partridge said it was best for the board to avoid presenting “a huge wish list” of funding requests to the governor.
“We really want to try and work through these items and talk about the priority and talk about what’s really important to this system, all six universities, and have that boots-on-the-ground knowledge to say, ‘no this is our priority and this is what we think is really, really important,’ helping, therefore, the governor and BFM make really good decisions about what it is we’re going to do and what should go to the Board of Regents with the money that might be a little more limited than it has in the past,” said Partridge.
