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SD tuition, fee hikes raise transparency questions

By The Associated Press

Anthony Sutton doesn’t hesitate when asked how much more he will pay this year to attend South Dakota State University.

“Six-point-nine percent, or roughly $500 more if a student takes 32 credit hours a year,” the 22-year-old political science and history major from Flandreau said.

So his part of the burden in making up a 10 percent cut in state funding to higher education is a 6.9 percent hike in tuition, Sutton was asked again?

“Yes,” he replied.

Well, not quite.

While the overall bump in tuition and fees for students attending one of the state’s six public universities does amount to 6.9 percent, the increase in the tuition portion actually is 14.5 percent — from $99.80 a credit hour to $114.30.

And last school year, when the Board of Regents set a 4.6 percent increase in tuition and fees, the tuition portion actually went up 8.8 percent.

“Really?” Sutton said. “I would say that surprises me a little bit.”

It shouldn’t, higher education officials say, insisting that the regents have been up-front about framing the hike in terms of “tuition and fees.”

About 50 percent of the student’s cost for higher education is tuition, said Jack Warner, executive director of the Board of Regents.

The other half involves two mandatory fees every student pays on every campus — the university support fee that helps to cover operational expenses, and the general activity fee that gets students into university functions and helps to pay for things such as wellness centers.

Those fees went up about 1 percent this year, except at Northern State University, where students are paying a little more to help remodel their union.

The 50-50 split differs from most other states, where tuition typically accounts for 80 percent or more of student bills. Warner couldn’t explain the difference here but said the higher increase in tuition across South Dakota the past few years reflects an effort to move South Dakota closer to the national norm.

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