Enrollment remains biggest challenge

Town and gown both have key roles

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Editor's note: The release of fall enrollment numbers for South Dakota public universities has been delayed as the South Dakota Board of Regents continues its new Banner implementation process. The date for the BOR enrollment announcement is tentative pending a final freeze date for fall enrollment through the upgraded system. The Regents Information Systems office is working toward a freeze date next week, and information will be shared appropriately as it becomes available and finalized.

BROOKINGS – “Enrollment remains very, very challenging and will be for the foreseeable future.”

That challenge was front and center for discussion when South Dakota State University President Barry Dunn met with The Brookings Register this past week. Most other topics that surfaced for discussion were in some way, shape or form tied to that challenge.

Since taking the helm Sept. 29, 2016, the president has led the university’s putting in place “a really strategic enrollment management plan.”

Enrollment, for both the general student population and the international student community, declined from academic year 2017 to 2018. This year’s enrollment numbers will be released by the Board of Regents soon.

Without hinting at any crystal-ball prognostications, Dunn again noted simply that “enrollment remains a challenge.”

When state legislators convene next year and address higher education issues, the president would like to see “a needs-based scholarship program” at the top of their list: “which we’re calling Dakota’s Promise.”

“It had some legs under it last year,” he explained. “But I think it has much more momentum across the state this year. We need our local legislators and every legislator to support it.

“We know that our enrollment of Pell (grant)-eligible students, those self-identified as having the most need, were down over 1,000 students in five years,” Dunn said. “We have 1,000 fewer of those students on campus than we did five years ago. 

“Five years ago, it was about a third of our students; and now it’s about 22 percent of our students. That’s going the wrong way. For a land-grant university whose mission is access, we’re going the wrong way.

“We’d like to go the other way. We’d like to have more young people who would qualify with some financial challenges here, so that we can lift them up and their families up, propel them into society.”

Add to that downward trend a decrease in the enrollment of international students: about 300 to 400 over the past three years.

Other recruitment sources

While the overall enrollment challenge has had its downside over the past few years, there have been some positive aspects: One of those is SDSU’s relationship with the Native American community of South Dakota, what Dunn called “the Wokini Initiative, SDSU’s collaborative and holistic framework to support American Indian student success and indigenous Nation-building.”

A total of more than $7 million has been raised for the American Indian Student Center and scholarships for American Indian students.

Dunn said the university’s goal is that American Indian students from South Dakota’s nine tribes “would have the same success rate as the general student population.”

“I think we’ve made tremendous strides in a very short period of time,” he added. He recently noted in an SDSU Alumni Association magazine that “applications from American Indian students from 2018 to 2019 have nearly doubled to 450, and we have awarded 22 Wokini Scholarships to incoming freshmen this fall.” 

There’s evidence that of those students awarded Wokini Initiative scholarships, 80 percent will be retained at SDSU; the president called that “a small sample but a major accomplishment.”

A couple of other potential pools for drawing students to SDSU are two-year technical schools and community colleges. The university presently has a partnership with Lake Area Technical Institute in Watertown. 

“We know that 25 percent of their graduates go on immediately to college,” Dunn said. “And SDSU provides the general education courses at Lake Area. There are lots of examples of engineers, nurses and people in agriculture moving from Lake Area with an associate of applied science degree and coming down here and finishing a bachelor’s degree. That’s what we’d like them to consider.”

And there is evidence that a lot of other LATI students later go on to college and earn bachelor’s degrees. “They’ve gained confidence in themselves; they understand that post-high school education is achievable for them.”

The president also cited the “community-college model” as being “very, very popular.” 

A student gets an associate’s degree and then goes on to earn a bachelor’s degree. It’s one way to reduce the cost of higher education. He noted, however, that “South Dakota does not have a community college that’s a true community college.”

“We have a new version of it in Sioux Falls,” Dunn added. “We’re certainly trying to offer associate degrees in Sioux Falls and help young people take a step toward higher education.

“We have four technical schools (in South Dakota); but there’s a big difference between a technical degree and an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree. I think there’s some misunderstanding of those programs.

“We’ve got a great relationship with Lake Area Tech; we have a new relationship with the Community College of Sioux Falls; we work very closely with Minnesota West, which is a true community college, and with community colleges in Iowa and in Nebraska.

“We’re trying to pull on all those levers to help enrollment and get people here.”

Tremendous return on investment

Lately in some of the news media, the higher cost of education, student-loan debt, the return on investment for a college degree and jobs obtained by college graduates are coming under scrutiny. 

Dunn comes down strongly as a traditionalist where the value of higher education is concerned – especially at SDSU and throughout the land-grant system. 

“We do a report card to the U.S. Department of Education and to the Board of Regents,” the president explained. “We have a lot of good things going. We have very pragmatic degrees that young people get excellent jobs with.

“And we know that someone with a bachelor’s degree, in their lifetime on average, will earn about a million dollars more than someone without one. So the return on investment is very high.”

While not diminishing the problems of leaving college with student-loan debt, Dunn noted that “leaving with $30,000 of student loans compared to a million dollars of lifetime earnings is a pretty modest investment with a tremendous return.”

Land grant university in a global community

While the number of international students who matriculate at SDSU has decreased over the past few years, they continue to play a valuable role in the land grant university mission in the global community. Add to that an international faculty.

“It plays out to the best in all of us,” Dunn said. “We have faculty from all over the world: serving in our Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering; in ag food; and in our pharmacy degree program.

“They’re wonderful citizens not only of their own countries, but as new Americans, bringing a lot of richness and experience to Brookings and to the students they teach. That’s probably the best for all of us, when we can exchange ideas and work together across cultures, religions and ethnicities, certainly in a very diverse racial makeup.”

“I think it’s great for our typical South Dakota son of immigrants from Germany, Norway, Denmark or Sweden to be exposed to faculty from Nepal or 50 different countries,” the president added. “It’s very enriching by getting young people to think about a world that’s bigger than just South Dakota, Minnesota or northwestern Iowa.”

Also vital to the accomplishment of the land grant university mission are research and facilities. At his inaugural address, Dunn called for “doubling research over 10 years.” He sees SDSU as on track to reach that goal. 

“We had a 6.5 percent increase in research expenditures last year,” he explained. “If we could annualize that growth, we would reach that goal. I’m excited about that. I understand that it’s going to take a lot of momentum to keep it going. It’s an early result that validates that the goal is reasonable.”

And SDSU has kept pace on “continuous improvement of facilities.” He cited the Wellness Center addition; Harding Hall; new apartments; and the new Animal Disease Research and Diagnostic Laboratory (ADRDL).

He called the ADRDL “the culmination of years of work,” harking back nine years to his tenure as dean of the College of Agriculture and Biological Sciences.

Town and gown: ‘enrollment absolutely key’

The president noted that the town-and-gown relationship is fine, but added it’s “always an area for continuous improvement.”

“Many of us on campus serve on community boards,” he added. “There’s just an enormous opportunity to work together. I think there are also opportunities to work better together.

 “I think it’s good to work together on issues such as drainage, housing, public safety and health care. All of those are top of mind for us.”

The president had kudos for the various city, county and state agencies that interact with the university: the Brookings Health System; Brookings Municipal Utilities; and public safety providers, including the police department, sheriff’s department, fire department, highway patrol and Division of Criminal Investigation.

“These days I can’t thank them enough for their willingness to protect the rest of us,” the president said. “It’s top of mind for me all the time, public safety. I probably worry more about that than anything in my job. I think they’re all heroes. If we don’t have an incident, they’re more heroes to me.”

Dunn noted that SDSU and Brookings have benefited from enormous investment in infrastructure, then noting that “we’re entering an era where the demographics of our enrollment are going to be extremely tough.” It’s a time for town to help gown.

“I think we need a helping hand from Brookings and Brookings citizens to help South Dakota State stabilize its enrollment,” the president explained. “And actually I think we all want it to grow. But right now the pressures are for a continued decline.

“I’ve talked about it with many civic leaders and need to talk about it more. We’re doing an economic impact study of SDSU on Brookings County. Then we’ll be able to show that if we increased enrollment the return to the Brookings community would be ‘X dollars’ and if we shrink, the impact will be negative.

“I think getting the Brookings community’s attention on the importance of their helping us with enrollment is absolutely key.”

Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.