Board of Regents Rewards Universities for Performance

ABERDEEN—Today at its regular business meeting at the South Dakota School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Board of Regents allocated revenues to the state universities based on performance. They also set performance targets in four areas for the 2000-2001 academic year. The performance targets are tied to state higher education goals.

The performance targets and state policy goals are a part of the funding distribution plan that the Regents adopted in December 1997. "In the past the universities were allocated revenues from general funds and from tuition, based on the number of credit hours generated by the students enrolled in their programs," said Regents President Harvey C. Jewett, IV. "In order to manage for policy goals we had to change the method of distributing the money."

Under the funding framework each university has an annual base budget. This amount will remain stable from year to year, unless a university sees dramatic enrollment growth or decline. "Long-range plans for programs and facilities are more easily made with a base budget under the funding framework," said Regents Executive Director Robert T. Tad Perry.

Each university contributes to five separate incentive funds. Each fund is tied to a state policy goal. The incentive funds support:

• increased access to education for South Dakota residents
• expanded enrollment in academic programs identified as important for the economic growth of South Dakota
• demonstrated improvement in academic performance of undergraduate students enrolled in the universities
• enhanced collaboration among the universities and with the state’s high schools to share scare resources
• augmented non-state financial support generated from grants, contracts, gifts, and contributions

"Based on the performance in 1999-2000, the universities are striving to achieve the goals set for them in these areas. Of course, performance varied, not only between institutions, but also within a single university toward the different goals. Not every university reaches its goal in every area. But the important point is that they are changing their behavior to accomplish the goals set by the Board, goals set in consultation with state legislators, the Governor, and other state policy makers," said Jewett.

Perry added, "Between fiscal year 1998 and fiscal year 2000, the university system has had improvement in the areas measured for incentive funding. The number of resident students has increased by 2% and enrollments in programs related to economic growth have increased 25%. The performance of students on the proficiency exams has improved. As the universities have increased efforts to share faculty and facilities collaborative activities have grown by 41%. The simple conclusion is that the universities have made very good progress and improvement in these incentive areas."