SIOUX FALLS — A scholarship program that incentivizes graduates to stay and work in South Dakota has awarded 2,785 scholarships to 1,995 students in its first two years.

“Most all of them are going straight into the South Dakota workforce,” said Freedom Scholarship Coordinator Elli Haerter.

The board that oversees the program revealed data from its first two years during a Monday meeting at First Premier Bank in Sioux Falls.

The scholarship was established by the South Dakota Legislature and supported by donations from entities like First Premier Bank, Avera, and Sanford Health. It offers scholarships based on financial need to students who attend South Dakota colleges and commit to remaining in the state for at least three years post-graduation.

Students must maintain a 2.0 grade point average to keep the $1,000 to 5,000 scholarships, which students can earn across multiple school years.

With exceptions, the program converts the scholarships into loans with a fixed interest rate of 4% for students who do not meet the program’s grade, graduation or post-graduation residency requirements.

In the program’s first two years, 182 scholarship recipients have graduated and found work in the state, Haerter told the Freedom Scholarship Board on Monday. Fifty-five of them found work in healthcare;40 are in the education sector.

The data shared Monday also included information on students who’ve failed to adhere to the scholarship requirements.

As of July, there were 143 scholarship recipients in that category. Specifically, 101 have been referred to a debt servicer for repayment, 15 have paid off the loans, five have had their debts forgiven and 22 have had their loans deferred. That’s typically because the student is pursuing tech school or an apprenticeship instead of college, Haerter noted.

Board Chair Dana Dykhouse said the state should not convert scholarships to loans for awardees who leave college to pursue a technical degree.

“I don’t think it should matter because, at the end of the day, we’re still getting a South Dakota worker,” he said. “And the state has a big need for workers.”

About $260,000 in scholarship dollars is now loans. Comparatively, around $10 million in scholarships has been awarded, according to Haerter. She and Dykhouse said those numbers are good, and will only improve as the program gets better at identifying students in need who are likely to succeed with the scholarship.

Starting next year, the number of high school graduates will begin to in Mississippi. That’s the looming reality a joint hearing of the House and Senate Colleges and Universities committees zeroed in on Wednesday.

In Mississippi, this trend, called the “enrollment cliff,” will force the largely tuition-dependent colleges and universities to compete for a shrinking pool of students. Regional institutions like Delta State University, Mississippi University for Women and Mississippi Valley State University, all of which are already struggling with enrollment, will be especially hurt.

The state is poised to see the second-worst decline of high school graduation rates in the Southern U.S. by 2027 after Virginia, according to data presented by Noel Wilkin, the University of Mississippi’s provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs.

The committee wanted to know: What is the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, the governing body for Mississippi’s eight public universities, doing about this?

“When can we expect a report to detail those recommendations and strategies for the future,” Sen. Scott DeLano, R-Biloxi vice chair of the Senate committee, asked Al Rankins, the IHL commissioner.

“Whenever you’d like to see a report,” Rankins responded. IHL has been talking about the enrollment cliff for years, he added, and has a working group focused on the regional college’s unique needs.

Kell Smith, the director of the Mississippi Community College Board, which operates differently from IHL, attended the hearing but did not present. He said MCCB doesn’t have a strategic plan for the enrollment cliff but some of the individual community colleges might.

“Very simply — how can we fix the problem to prepare for 15 years from now?” Rep. Donnie Scoggin, R-Ellisville the House chair, asked Wilkin.

There are few simple answers. The enrollment cliff is unavoidable, the product of declining birth rates that will be exacerbated by out-migration from Mississippi and deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic, John Green, a Mississippi State University professor, told the committee.

But the changing economics of higher education is largely the years ago. In Mississippi, the four-year public universities are all more dependent on tuition than they are state appropriations.

Rankins presented a chart showing that in 2000, state appropriations supported nearly 60% of the universities operating budgets, while tuition was 26%. In fiscal year 2023, that ratio had basically flipped, with tuition supporting 64% of operating budgets.

This raises the question: If Mississippi’s colleges and universities are increasingly reliant on student tuition, not taxpayer dollars, are they still a public service?

It’s complicated, said Rep. Lance Varner, a member of the House committee, whose 16-year-old daughter has started getting recruitment letters from out-of-state colleges hoping to attract her away from Mississippi.

“If you own a business, your goal is to try to get people to come to your business,” he said.

At the same time that he thinks higher education is a public good, Varner, R-Florence, said he bets the universities wish they could be even less dependent on state appropriations.

“Every one of those colleges is working hard to make sure they’re self-sufficient,” he said. “They don’t want to depend on the Legislature.”

At the University of Mississippi, tuition and fees now represent 78% of its total operating budget, according to IHL’s presentation, the highest of any public university.

A huge driver of that is the number of out-of-state students, who pay nearly three times more for tuition than Mississippi residents, now make up half the university’s total population of more than $21,000, Wilkin told the committee. This is one way Ole Miss is responding to the enrollment cliff, which it started preparing for in 2017.

“We have become a destination state for higher education,” Wilkin said.

University of Mississippi netted $62 million in tuition from in-state students in fiscal year 2023 — but brought in $188 million from non-resident students. It’s a crucial revenue source that, Wilkin said, allows Ole Miss to keep its costs down for in-state students.

“If I were to take all the revenue that comes from in-state students and all the state appropriations we get and compare that to what it costs us to educate those students, we’re still left with a multimillion-dollar hole,” Wilkin said.

Wilkin also discussed the “intangible” aspect of higher education that shapes if, why and where students attend college, especially in light of the fact high school graduates are becoming more diverse.

“All of us see there have been questions raised about the value of a higher education degree today,” he said.

By 2036, white students are projected to comprise 43% of high school graduates compared to 51% today. Black students will increase from 25% to 28%.

Smith, the MCCB director, said after the meeting that community colleges need to be focusing more on students who don’t have a high school diploma.

“We need to go after those students irregardless of what the enrollment cliff looks like,” he said.

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Officials from Indiana’s public colleges and universities agreed Thursday that their schools need to do a better job at convincing Hoosier students of the value of four-year degrees.

The discussion took place during the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute’s annual luncheon in downtown Indianapolis.

Representatives from Indiana, Purdue, Ball State and Vincennes universities, as well as Indiana State and Ivy Tech Community College, conceded that rising tuition costs are deterring thousands of students from post-high school educations.

“How do we demonstrate the value of the education?” asked Christopher Ruhl, chief financial officer and treasurer at Purdue University. “Why would I spend all this money and incur all this debt? That’s what students are asking. And we’ve also got to sell this better and make sure the degree is worth the value. What’s your return on investment? Is this a good value? We hope at Purdue the answer is a resounding yes, but we have to continue focusing on that.”

More student aid — and transparency about costs

Despite pushback from some state lawmakers and budget officials, Indiana’s public colleges and universities are slated to increase tuition and fees over the biennium — up to 4.9% per year — according to .

The revelation has since put the state’s higher education officials in the hot seat and prompted calls for Indiana schools to renew efforts to make degrees more affordable and valuable for students.

Concerns also surround Indiana’s declining college-going rate. The state’s higher education commissioner indicated in June that Indiana’s already dismal college-going rate has declined by roughly another half-percent.

Data released last year showed that only half of Indiana’s 2020 high school graduates pursued some form of college education beyond high school. The drop marked the, but the decline has been ongoing for the last five years.

That’s compared to five years ago, when 65% of Indiana’s high school graduates pursued some form of higher education.

Dominick Chase, a senior vice president for Ivy Tech Community College, said Indiana institutions “want to keep prices low as possible,” not just for tuition, but for other expenses, too.

“No one likes to be surprised by the end of the process when you have fees you weren’t expecting at the beginning,” he said, adding that’s why Ivy Tech strives to “be transparent at the front about how much it’s going to cost.”

The state’s largest public postsecondary institution is trying to ease the financial burden on students by , he noted. This fall, eligible students are assessed just $17 per credit hour for textbooks. Next year, that fee will drop to $16 per credit hour.

Dwayne Pinkney, Indiana University’s executive vice president for finance and administration, emphasized that IU’s tuition prices are among the lowest in the Big 10, and that the school is “committed to getting institutional aid” to as many students as possible.

“We certainly recognize that tuition increases create challenges for students and families,” he said. “We’re making sure we’re doing everything we can.”

Still, Pinkney doubled down that “investments” in the state’s schools still offer “great returns.” He said 80% or more of the university’s funds are needed to compensate “the excellent faculty, researchers and support staff who provide the best opportunities for our students.”

Anand Marri, Ball State’s interim provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said utility costs are also on the rise, affecting some schools’ budgets. Even though the Muncie school has the largest geothermal system in the country, utility costs have increased by more than 5%, he said.

Marri added that university research shows a four-year degree provides more than $1.7 million to a graduate over their lifetime, and that schools “have to get that message across to an increasingly skeptical audience.”

Even so, Chase recognized how easy it is “to get on YouTube now and learn things faster.”

“I don’t think, as a consumer in this day in age, that we’d want to take this length of time to learn something,” he said of traditional college degrees. “Students want to do more, faster.”

Vincennes University President Charles Johnson agreed, and said the state’s schools can collaborate even more, given “there are multiple ways to get the same bachelor’s degree.”

Indiana State University Vice President Diann McKee said focusing on higher education pathways is especially important for attractions and retaining first generation and Pell Grant-eligible students.

“Those are the students we primarily serve,” McKee said. “It’s really important for us, and for them, to make sure we’re maintaining affordability for four-year degrees.”

Prospects for new Indianapolis campus

Also discussed during the Thursday meeting was the dissolution of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Following a 53-year partnership, the school will be separated into two — Indiana University Indianapolis and Purdue University in Indianapolis — beginning in July 2024.

University officials reiterated Thursday that the split will help each school expand their academic and research portfolios, in addition to making a positive impact on the state’s economy.

Dan Hasler, chief operating officer for Purdue in Indianapolis, said the restructured urban campus won’t have its own chancellor. Instead, the goal is for Boilermakers and faculty at the Indianapolis location to be “in sync” with the flagship West Lafayette campus.

The Indianapolis extension will especially focus on various “flavors” of engineering degrees, as well as other science and business-related majors.

He further noted that 80% of students who apply to Purdue’s West Lafayette campus to do computer science get rejected – not because they aren’t qualified, but because the university “is out of space.” The Indianapolis location is a chance to give those students the education they want, Hassler continued.

Between 800 and 1,100 new first-year students are expected in Indianapolis in Fall 2024, with the goal that most students will be residential on the campus in the coming years.

As Purdue looks forward, Hasler said the university is hoping to introduce additional fields of study, including in agriculture and motorsports engineering — given the close proximity to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

On the Indiana University side, Michael Huber, vice president of university relations, said the Indianapolis campus will help meet “significant demand” for health and life sciences. While the 65-mile corridor running from West Lafayette to Indianapolis has become what some are calling the “Hard Tech Corridor,” Huber said IU is coining the stretch of Interstate 69 between Bloomington and Indianapolis the “Life Science Corridor.”

To help, new applied research partnerships with Eli Lilly, also located in Indianapolis, are in the works, he said.

Additional libraries and health services are also coming together on the campus that can be shared by students at both universities, he said.

The two university officials said the combined central Indiana campus should help increase retention of current students, as well as recent graduates.

IU Indianapolis announced its own initiative last month to offer direct admission to Indianapolis Public Schools students who have a grade point average of at least 3.0. Huber said the program has already garnered a “flood” of interest from other Marion County high schools who want the same opportunity for their students.

“We’re banking on relationships,” Hasler added, referring to collaborations in Indianapolis between the universities and industry.

But he emphasized that Indiana-based companies “have to compete,” too. That means more internships, apprenticeship programs and other incentives will need to come together to better “woo” students to stay in the Hoosier state.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

TOPEKA — A new labor report revealed the current annual rate of degree and certificate completion at Kansas colleges and universities would be insufficient to meet anticipated growth in demand for young, educated workers and could leave the state’s economy with an estimated 34,000 shortfall by end of this decade.

Analysis by the Institute for Policy and Social Research at the University of Kansas delved into challenges of surging higher education attainment in Kansas despite a declining percentage of high school graduates interested in college, the out-migration of Kansas college graduates to Missouri, Colorado and Texas, and the lack of competitiveness of salaries paid Kansas workers in engineering, business and other fields compared to peers in nearby states.

Failure of state lawmakers, education leaders and employers to address labor gaps, especially demand for recipients of bachelor’s degrees, could impede economic development through 2030.

“We hear a message, and I believe this too, that not everyone needs a baccalaureate degree,” said Blake Flanders, president and chief executive officer of the Kansas Board of Regents. “The fact of the matter is the data says there are a lot of people who will need a baccalaureate degree.”

Donna Ginther, KU distinguished professor economics and director of the research institute, said the report showed Kansas could add 54,000 jobs requiring a postsecondary degree from 2020 to 2030. This evaluation took into account the likely exit from the Kansas labor force of 180,000 people with postsecondary degrees due to retirement or moving to other states. Overall, Kansas would need to fill 234,000 jobs with new graduates over the 10 years.

At the current pace, she said, about 200,000 new postsecondary graduates could be expected to stay in Kansas through 2030. That would mean Kansas had to come up with an additional 34,000 credentialed workers to satisfy projected growth in jobs, Ginther said.

Exporting graduates

Ginther said Kansas had a track record of modest net migration losses among recipients of higher education credentials, but had substantial deficits with Texas and Colorado. One concern was higher wages offered in those states, even when Kansas’ lower cost of living was woven into calculations. A Kansas business degree recipient could expect to annually earn $10,000 more by taking a job in Colorado, she said. A Kansas engineer could make $15,000 more per year in Texas and a computer science graduate in Colorado could receive a salary of $20,000 greater than in Kansas.

In addition, the study showed Kansas retained less than half of all bachelor’s degree recipients nine years after graduation. The higher the degree earned, Ginther said, the more likely a person would depart Kansas.

“This is a challenge and an opportunity. If we can keep these people, we will meet that 34,000 number,” Ginther said. “People want to live here if they can find a good job. That’s the bottom line.”

Ginther said Kansas policymakers could make inroads into the problem by improving college readiness among the state’s high school graduates and by keeping a public college education affordable to students. She said the state could invest more broadly in college loan forgiveness programs that required Kansas graduates to take jobs in the state. In addition, she would encourage Kansas employers to make salaries more competitive with nearby states.

Overall, the KU institute’s report indicated the Kansas economy could absorb from 2020 to 2030 the recipients of 36,500 bachelor’s degrees, 7,400 college certifications, 3,500 doctoral or professional degrees, 3,100 master’s degrees, 3,000 associate degrees, and 1,100 requiring some college but no degree.

Wider path to college

Melanie Haas, chair of the Kansas State Board of Education, said part of the answer was expanding acceptance in public school districts of the value in creating personalized education plans for each student. She said some, but not all, school districts were enthusiastic about developing education plans for all students.

Formation of a documented education pathway could carry a student through high school and into college, she said.

“We need to hold districts to a high standard in the interests of students and the families they serve,” Haas said. “Students need to see their own path to college.”

Kansas Board of Regents member Cynthia Lane, the former superintendent of schools in Kansas City, Kansas, said Kansas should mandate districts make perhaps three college-level courses available to every high school student. Kansas has expanded opportunities for high school students to earn more college credit, but inconsistency in availability of courses remained an issue.

“When you talk about students graduating with more than their high school diploma — early college hours, credentials — we are in great alignment,” Lane said.

Wint Winter, a member of the state Board of Regents, said convincing people who earned college degrees in Kansas to stay in this state was a laudable goal. However, he said, out-of-state students attending college in Kansas still made a contribution to the state’s economy.

“We need to aspire to figure out a way to keep our students here, whether they are native Kansans or coming from Chicago,” Winter said. “I think we lose sight of the fact that even if we have that student for only four years, that student is contributing to the gross state product.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on and .

It found more than half of unvaccinated American adults who reported strong hesitancy to the vaccine had a high school education or less. Five of the top 10 reasons for bypassing inoculation included lack of knowledge about its benefits and the risks of remaining unvaccinated. 

A lack of confidence in the shot itself followed by concerns about side effects and distrust in government were listed as the greatest concerns among the vaccine hesitant, according to a draft version of , which will be published in an upcoming issue of the

“Vaccine hesitancy is a complex problem across the U.S.,” said Saif Khairat, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the study’s principal author. “And the root cause of that problem is different for different people.”

The study considered a number of variables, including the percent of households with no access to a vehicle; those who were unemployed; had less than a high school education; had trouble speaking English; identified as a member of a minority group; lived in poverty; were over 65 or were single parents with children under 18. 

The paper centered on data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as of May 9, 2021. It examined statistics from nearly every county in America — Texas did not provide vaccination data — in an effort to help policymakers better understand the characteristics of vaccine holdouts.

While the study focused on information gleaned more than eight months ago, the issue remains: Just as of Jan. 20, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Vaccination rates vary widely by age. More than 84 percent of U.S. adults age 65 and older are fully inoculated, according to . The figure drops dramatically for children ages 5 to 11: It tops out at 48.4 percent of young children in Vermont and just 5.3 percent in Alabama. The CDC for this age group in November. 

continue to feel the strain — some at record levels — as COVID-related beds are filled mostly by patients who have not been inoculated. Some countries, buckling under the Omicron variant, are considering a . 

Former President Donald Trump, who once famously said he loves “the poorly educated,” downplayed the severity of the virus, though he was vaccinated. The notion has a stubborn hold on his most ardent followers who at a recent event when he said he received a vaccine booster. 

Khairat and his co-authors said public outreach targeting the undereducated should address the shot’s safety and effectiveness and include statistics on the percentage of people within their local community who have received the inoculation. Vaccine promotion efforts should incorporate discussion of a path back to normalcy through herd immunity — information, they said, best delivered by a trusted, locally recognized figure.

of American adults ages 25 and older had not earned their high school diploma as of 2017, according to the American Council on Education. Another 29 percent graduated high school but did not further their education.

Anthony DiMaggio, associate professor of political science at Lehigh University, said his recent analysis shows that age is the strongest predictor of vaccination rates — but that education also plays a major role. 

“What is not in question is that both factors are significant in accounting for whether people are vaccinated or not, with less educated Americans and those under 60 being less likely to have gotten at least two shots by mid-2021,” he said. 

John A. Romley, associate professor at the University of Southern California, helped conduct earlier this year. He and his colleagues discovered that U.S. counties that scored high on both hesitancy and “social vulnerability” were “especially likely” to have lower COVID-19 vaccination rates than the rest of the nation.

Romley and his team have more recently begun to focus on children. Preliminary results from their latest efforts show socioeconomic disadvantage plays a larger role in vaccination rates for kids than it does for adults.

“Parents think about vaccinations for themselves differently than they think about vaccinations for their kids,” Romley said. 

Some adults are required by their employers to take the vaccine. They also might realize they are more vulnerable to a more severe illness than their children, he said. Other unknowns, including the shot’s long-term impact, might also contribute to their hesitancy. 

“Talking to people with respect and trying to persuade them is the only way to make progress,” Romley said. “But in these polarized times, the conversations we have are pretty heated and I don’t think that’s helping.”

Time has shown that not recommendations, are more effective in boosting vaccination rates. 

to push for a vaccine mandate for students back in October: The requirement would go into effect in July. states have followed suit. 

Individual school districts, including Los Angeles Unified, that tried the same tactic were met with immediate backlash and by the threat that additional students would go remote. New York City schools have so far not required students be vaccinated, with Mayor Eric Adams promising a decision on a mandate . 

But at least one New York City educator said mandates are not the answer, even in the face of the Omicron variant. Patrick Sprinkle, a high school social studies teacher at the N.Y.C. Lab School for Collaborative Studies in Manhattan, said he’s worried about inoculation rates and the spread of the virus, but doesn’t believe families should be forced to take the shot. 

“This remains a pressing concern for me,” he said. “It is of the utmost importance that we encourage families to have their children vaccinated, however, a mandate is an unwise policy decision as it will push more students into ineffective remote learning and deny students the highest quality education possible.”