REGENTS REPORT

South Dakota Higher Education: Good Investment. Great Future.   NO. 80, 09/15/97

High School Students & University Picks

South Dakota's Public Universities Have a Lot to Offer Students

Each year high school students from across the country and South Dakota take the American College Testing (ACT) college entrance exams. When the test is administered, ACT collects some other information on high school students to help policy makers and educators plan for the future. ACT recently released information on students' institutional preferences for post-secondary study in South Dakota. It indicates that many students are not aware of the variety, low cost, and quality of public higher education in South Dakota.

Top Picks for Students

South Dakota's public universities have always been among the top ten institutions that South Dakota high school students indicate as their first choice to attend. However, this year only 48% of the South Dakota high school students taking the ACT indicated one of South Dakota's public universities as their first choice. This percentage is down from the three previous years, as the graph below shows.

SOURCE: ACT

A Lot for the Money

At a price few, if any, can beat, South Dakota students can study a wide variety of majors with the convenience and savings of being close to home. South Dakota's six public universities offer over 200 majors of study and confer degrees from the certificate and associate level to the doctoral level. Many university departments provide unparalleled hands-on research opportunities to undergraduates, making them more attractive to employers and graduate schools. In addition, South Dakota's public universities provide students access to professors with a student/faculty ratio of 16 to 1 and are investing over $2 million in technology to improve educational opportunities and service to students.

Quality

South Dakota's public universities provide a superb academic experience; one measure of this is student performance on national standardized exams. On these exams, South Dakota university students perform on par with or better than the national norms. The graph to the left shows the passing rates on licensure and professional certification exams and the graph below shows the performance of South Dakota university students on national proficiency exams.

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Conclusion

Higher education is one of the most empowering investments people can make in themselves, their children, and their community. In addition to top notch faculty and programs in a variety of disciplines---South Dakota's public universities offer a low-cost, high-quality and close-to-home choice for South Dakotans to further their education.