Artificial intelligence and tuition costs were among the topics mentioned during last week’s Board of Regents town hall. Nathan Lukkes, executive director for the South Dakota Board of Regents, took questions from faculty and students in the Student Union of the SDSU campus during the open forum discussion.
In what Lukkes described as a “dynamic and volatile time,” in higher education across the country, he explained that the most recent legislative session was favorable towards higher education.
“You know, fortunately, it was a fairly favorable legislative session for us. From a, what I’d call, anti-higher ed bill, and that’s a general categorization,” Lukkes said. “We had only two bills that were introduced that were specific to higher education that we were opposed to.”
One bill in question aimed to change gun restrictions on campus by removing the “enhanced permit” requirement to carry on campus. Currently, concealed carry is allowed for those over 18 that have an enhanced permit to carry.
The other bill would have removed the two year on-campus housing requirement. The housing bill, South Dakota House Bill 1193, was killed in the house vote. South Dakota House Bill 1133, which dealt with the enhanced permit requirements, failed in the House Committee.
Lukkes said this was a favorable outcome compared to what neighboring states are facing. Iowa, for example, is facing more than 20 anti-higher education bills, Lukkes said.
“So, when we talk about this kind of volatile political climate in higher ed, it’s not just the Floridas and the Texas’s,” Lukkes said. “But recently, we’ve been seeing Oklahoma, Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Utah, you know, a lot of states that you don’t think of as on the extreme end of the spectrum.”
Tuition may increase in the future, salary policies being a key driver. When it comes time for the salaries for professors and faculty to increase, the state will cover half of the raise. The Regents must then come up with a way to cover the other half of the increase. A common way to raise these funds is by raising tuition or fees.
“I’m not going to get ahead of the board, but I’ll give you some numbers,” Lukkes said. “So when I talked about needing to increase for salary policy and then inflation on operations, that would equate to like a 1.65% tuition increase.”
Lukkes said the board is trying to find a “sweet spot” between not trying to pass off unnecessary costs to students while staying competitive in the higher education market.
Artificial Intelligence
With the changes surrounding education and the work force as a whole, an evolving priority of the Board of Regents is to ensure students are Artificial Intelligence (AI) ready. A problem facing the Regents, however, is the price of implementing this technology. Data security for example will be an expensive implementation to develop across the Board of Regents’ schools, according to Lukkes.
Another concern, expressed by President Barry Dunn during the town hall, is the possibility of AI creating educational disparity across the state.
“Since we have a common course catalog” Dunn said, “I’m concerned that AI will even exacerbate the differences between campuses.”
Lukkes said he believes that by keeping the six schools under the Board of Regents jurisdiction aligned and by providing proper framework, imbalance can be limited.
With the uncertain future, Lukkes didn’t question the ability for South Dakota residents to overcome adversity.
“We’re South Dakotans. We just do things the way South Dakotans do them,” Lukkes said. “We roll up our sleeves. We go to work. We engage with people. We have conversations.”
