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News Release |
For Immediate Release: Friday, October 10, 2003 Regents Consider "Children of Alumni" Proposal BROOKINGS - A reduced out-of-state tuition rate for children of South Dakota public universities' alumni may be a cost-effective way to attract more college students to the state and increase revenues, the South Dakota Board of Regents was told Friday. The board's staff and its Council of Presidents and Superintendents are recommending a special "Children of Alumni" undergraduate tuition rate for qualifying out-of-state students. The rate assessed would be at 150 percent of the resident tuition rate. Currently, undergraduates who pay the full non-resident tuition rate in South Dakota are charged 318 percent more than residents. The Board of Regents endorsed the concept Friday. The regents will set tuition and fees at their March 18-19, 2004, meeting. "We are bringing this proposal to the board's attention now, so a decision can be made at the time the regents finalize tuition and fees in March 2004 for the following academic year," said Robert T. Tad Perry, the Regents' executive director. "If implemented, the Children of Alumni program would be effective for the academic term beginning next summer." The public universities previously offered a Children of Alumni program, but it was phased out starting in 1995. That tuition program was popular among alumni and supporters of the public university system, Perry said. "Now may be the right time to revisit this idea because the long-term demographic shifts taking place within South Dakota mean fewer traditional college-age students in the pipeline," he said. Many non-residents who attend South Dakota public universities are already taking advantage of reduced tuition rates under a special adjacent-state program for Iowa and Nebraska students, as well as under the Western Undergraduate Exchange and Minnesota reciprocity programs. "It makes sense to expand those reduced tuition arrangements to include children of alumni who come from other states not covered by these programs," Perry said. -30- |
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