SDSU Rolling out proposal on mega-campus expansion to include retail and hotel space?

Why not?

If Johnson holds out on Health Care like a certain senator from that huricane damaged state he could just pay for it.

I’m confused about exactly where they are planning to expand to? Are these new expansions going to be north of the highway 14 bypass?

Oh and why not. If we elect the mayor of Brookings to replace the mayor of Pierre in the governor’s mansion the “good deals”, “secret handshakes” and “no-bid contracts will just flow east on Highway 14. This is comedic-tragedy coming from a bunch of free-market hypocrites.

We can’t wait for the fraudulent accounting that shows us, like the faux university centers, that, “it’ll pay for itself”.

Hello, McFly, what part of “across-the-board-cuts” don’t you understand?! One place to start with those budget cuts is the the folks, offices, and supervisors that wasted our time on this pipe dream.

If SDSU wants to be a real DI school, it needs to look and act like one. This is a step in that direction. My alma mater, the University of Houston, which is probably 2 1/2 times the size of SDSU, did a similar redevelopment a few years and I cannot tell you what a great enhancement it was for the campus, the surrounding community, and for the students.

I wasn’t wild about SDSU going DI. Now that they are, they might as well be a really good and attractive DI school. SDSU isn’t a sleepy little school on the prairie any more, whether we like it or not.

Todd Epp
Not an SDSU alum but married to one

Good grief. Houston has oil money and millions of tax-paying residents. Brookings has cow farts and a handful of Q-tips on social security. It’s like comparing cow pies and rabbit droppings by calling it all fertilizer.

We must get serious about putting our fiscal house in order. It doesn’t start with raygunomics, “borrow, borrow, spend, spend”.

We must to take a chapter from the governors of Kansas and Missouri – we need blood on the floor.
http://www.kansascity.com/637/story/1589970.html
California raised tuition 32% last week.

We also need to get the lavish public employee benefits, pensions, and double-dipping under control.
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&keywords=Plunder%20Greenhut%20&search-type=ss&tag=mishsglobalec-20&index=books&link_code=qs

There is no room to talk about public financing of hotels, retail stores, (or state park convention centers). Good grief.
If this “economic stimulus” is talk we can expect to hear from the campaigns of the Brookings and Sioux Falls-based candidates we’re in deeper trouble than a mere $200 million deficit.

Jon:

The U of H is in one of the worst neighborhoods in Houston and is funded like a red-headed step child compared to the “first tier” Texas universities like UT, TAMU, and TTU. If you don’t like the UH comparison, look at NU at Lincoln and their facilities. Or NDSU’s. SDSU appears to be poised to be a major regional university akin to the U of M. They are on their way to having the research background, the athletic reputation, the facilities, and now, maybe, the amenities of a major university. This proposal will do wonders for both Brookings and SDSU. When you’re DI, go big or gone home if you want to compete.

Todd Epp

“If this “economic stimulus” is talk we can expect to hear from the campaigns of the Brookings and Sioux Falls-based candidates we’re in deeper trouble than a mere $200 million deficit.”

Jon, what on earth are you talking about? This is coming from SDSU, not any of the candidates.

SDSU, at the very least, needs new dorms. I visited my brither there when he was a freshman. The dorms are terrible, cramped, small, and dark. How two students live there with all their stuff and don’t kill each other amazes me.
I had a room twice that size to myself when I was in school (an actual D1 university with a student population equal to Aberdeen’s).

This is actually a system wide thing. Enter Coyote Village at USD:

http://www.usd.edu/campus-life/student-services/university-housing/coyote-village/

Edit: Coyote Village has 550 beds and the SDSU development only has 300.

Epp’s right from start to finish. I went to Kansas State. They had a similar project long before I went there. It’s almost impossible to find a room at the University Holiday Inn, which the school owns.

It helps the university do business. If stimulus funds are going to go with the expansion of our educational facilities, so be it. I could think of a lot worse uses for those funds.

“Jon, what on earth are you talking about? This is coming from SDSU, not any of the candidates.”
The blog post reads like a trial balloon floated by a campaign manager for the Brookings mayor.

The Nebraska example has credence – they have a million more folks than does South Dakota and fewer state funded colleges. It makes sense that Nebraska has an enormous state university. It’s long past the time that South Dakota consolidated – 1) the management of its colleges & universities, and 2) the number of them. Is South Dakota incapable or incompetent to manage as well or better than does Nebraska or Wyoming?

North Dakota, similar to Texas and Kansas, has vast oil and coal royalties that fund these white elephants. On the other hand South Dakota refuses to even put a modest tax on a pipeline, or wind energy transmission.

Universities are like the health care industry in that they are willfully blind to cost containment.

Why should the taxpayers want to, or need to subsidize folks who want to do business with the taxpayers’ university? That makes no sense – unless you are for socializing business costs and while privatizing profits.

Jon,

I can understand your confusion. Candidates such as those who represent your party send up trial balloons.

My guy? If you want to know where he stands, he wrote a book, so you can read it in black and white.

You can even do it for free at Munstermanforgovernor.com.

South Dakota State University is going to emerge as a national leader in energy research. Matt McGovern and I recently attended a student forum on our energy future, and listened to a researcher in bio-fuels and to another in energy technology. We were very impressed with the new frontiers in renewable energy and energy conservation which are being opened at State. The national renaissance in how we create and use energy passes through SDSU.

Opening the doors to this new potential only enriches South Dakota and puts our state ahead of other states. These upgrades for the campus will reflect very well on the City of Brookings and the people of South Dakota. Or, to put it another way, if you want to compete in the bigger leagues, you better look the part.

Brookings and SDSU are no longer the sleepy little berg that I attended back in the 70s. They’ve turned a corner and decided it is better to thrive than to creep along unnoticed. It’s the same kind of spirit which we see catching fire in some other communities of our state, like Howard.

Jon – in point of fact – Nebraska does have more state funded universities than South Dakota. Nebraska has seven to our six . For some reason people seem to forget that Chadron, Kearney, Wayne State and Peru are all state schools.

Anthony, you are correct. Nebraska has nearly as many state universities as South Dakota. At the same time, one must remember they have almost 1 million more people (a population about 225% of our population).

Jon: The challenge on this issue is not conducive to simple solutions.

1) As you correctly point out, we have an abundance of state universities relative to many other states. Maybe all states.

2) What you leave out is that historically we actually had a more even population distribution than most similar states with large land mass like South Dakota. Colleges are located where the people are. Because of our historical population distribution, our past system has historically served us quite well by just about ever measure

3) Related to #2, we our state population will significantly shift over the next twenty years from especially the James River valley to the Hills and the Sioux Falls Metro area.

4) Size has efficiencies and costs which have to measured against each other. Large centralized companies, governments and even universities have abilities to be more efficient in certain administrative efficiencies. At the same time, small decentralized companies, governments and universities are inherently more responsive and able to adjust to changing realities.

The question is what is best to deliver higher education. The reality is that more students attend small colleges in this country than large ones. Is it because students choose proximity issues (close to hometown or where they ultimately want to live) or because of the nature of a small institution. I don’t know and I suspect few people really know.

Twenty five years ago, the consolidation argument centered on closing Black Hills State and Dakota State (and of course Springfield) with Northern becoming our third major university. Except for the mining expertise of Mines, there was also interest in moving engineering to SDSU.

Today, using similar metrics of analysis, (while Springfield would still be closed), Mines would be expanded because of the Sanford Lab, DSU would be expanded because of their niche product related to technologies growing import in the economy, and Black Hills expanded and Northern closed because of population shifts.

If we had done what was proposed 25 years ago, today we’d be calling our past decision makers idiots and short-sighted. If we were to do what makes sense today, would our future decision makers calling us idiots?

With all this said, I’d like to make two points.

1) Just because the “solutions” proposed 25 years ago would have been wrong, we should not allow ourselves to be paralyzed to make no decisions.

2) We need to analyze the past and predict the future.

What was right about Janklow’s decisions to keep Dakota State and close Springield?

What was wrong about the idea to close Black Hills and possibly Mines?

Did we miss an opportunity or dodge a bullet in the idea of expanding Northern?

What are the long-term population trends in our state and how important is that in the location of Universities?

Is there a way to look at our “product” differently? The Sioux Falls high schools are adopting its product by having a college track and vocational track.

Should we get over our historical prejudice that vocational education is somehow less prestigious than a college education? Would this new outlook create new opportunities and missions for a Northern? In reality, DSU in many ways is really a college providing vocational skills concentrated in technology.

I mean absolutely no disparaging with this comment. I’m quite proud that my youngest daughter has chosed to be an elementary education teacher. But, isn’t teaching really “vocational” in nature? Granted, it requires a liberal arts delivery of the product but it isn’t preparing one for a broad option of employment range. They are trained to have a specialty just like one learning diesel mechanics. The primary difference is curriculum.

And once you look at education majors as “vocational,” suddenly it becomes easy to look at medicine/nursing as vocational, engineering as vocational, etc.

My point is our forebears made good decisions in the past that served us well, Janklow made good decisions with regard to DSU, Springfield, and his non-decision on Northern looks good too. Mickelson’s change at SE VoTech looks good. Rounds decision regarding the University Center in Sioux Falls is too early to assess properly but it too looks more good than bad.

Our system is not broke today and served us well. It might need tweaking (SDSU’s plan is a tweak as significant as it might be tacticly). Or because of the shifting population and changing education demands require wholesale and fundamental reorganization.

I know I’ve been windy here and maybe rambling. But, with all these consideration, the pending plans at SDSU and USD, the impact of these schools going D-1, the growing opportunities for research (esp. at Mines related to the Sanford Lab and at SDSU), and changing education paradigms, I think we should all pause, bring together a lot of diverse interests (business, education experts (delivery and programming as well as understanding student desires in the future), technology, research, economists, demographic experts, geographic and population experts, etc.) to formalize a strategic discussion so we can make some sense of our future and give us the greatest opportunity to make the right decision.

Anthony, in essence the two new SD university centers became de facto new universities in new towns with new administration, etc. It looks like a duck, quacks like . . .

PP, I don’t have a party.

Troy, thanks for the thoughtful analysis. Agree that the higher ed delivery metrics have to change in response in and support of the changing needs of the population.

My issues include that the taxpayer should not over-subsidize higher education delivery everywhere for everyone, nor retail stores, nor motels. Good grief, what’s next, a university old folks home and hospice? It’s becoming as cradle-to-grave as is the military – we can’t afford it. We don’t have the resources. So if,(when) we “create” university centers – what was the bill payer? When we catapult SDSU to D1, what’s the bill payer? Folks too tied to higher ed, health care or the military lack ability to control costs. Someone has to be the adult – that’s who I’m looking for.

I respectfully disagree with the premise there are no simple solutions. Most solutions are simple. Marshaling the will to do them is the hard part.

Jon,

I agree there are simple solutions. But they are the result of sometimes complex and deep analysis. Right now, I’m not sure enough people from wide enough backgrounds have been involved.

I understand your point regarding the recent changes and what is the financial impact on taxpayers and how do they mesh with long-term strategic decisions on a global basis. We are really making the same point. Maybe we should pause and think globally vs. making alot of tactical decisions.

I’m amazed that the blatent expansion of government into private enterprise hasn’t even been discussed here… Why would the university need to get into these businesses… That’s for private enterprise to do, not an expansion of the near-socialistic society they’ve already established in Brookings.

^^^^ yes, why no mention that NONE of this would be on the property tax rolls, and would be disastrous for the city of brookings. the only short term gain would be jobs, a lot of which would come from chicago where the construction firm is from.

Uh, Danno, you are aware that Brookings runs its own liquor store, telephone, and electric utilities, right? This tends to help make Brookings look like a bargain when it comes to city property tax rates, you know.

As far as this expansion goes, Jon is quite right that there does need to be some concept of cost containment when it comes to higher education. The only way that this project can be even remotely justified is if the current trend of lack of moving to other areas nationwide (2008 saw the lowest percentage of folks moving in nearly 60 years) solidifies and becomes noticeable to the point where more youth end up staying in South Dakota by default. There is too much cheap property in Las Vegas and Phoenix (to name just two places) for the lack of moving to become a solid trend.

Which means this: South Dakota will continue the trend of exporting large numbers of its youth for the forseeable future. And if the South Dakota taxpayer is going to be (in effect) educating someone else’s workforce (even the US Military’s), it has a fiduciary duty to make the cost as inexpensive as possible. This expansion reeks of “money pit.”

Brad and Jon,

Where did you read that the these developments would be subsidized by state government and that they would not be on the tax rolls. It is possible that this type of development would actually put land and the subesequent developments back on the state tax rolls and generate additional tax revenue for the state.

Brad you seem to think our only chance for population growth at our universities and in our communities is if people quit moving and more South Dakota students just remain in South Dakota after they graduate.

The real answer is we need to be nationally and globally competitive for both attracting students and faculty to top rate post secondary institutions and we need to be equally as competitive in nurturing statups, promoting existing business expansions and recruiting additional business to provide opportunities to help retain more students.

I am not necessarily in favor of all aspects of this proposal and the proposed locations for certain components, but any of it is better than the defeatist thought process that says lets just cover the basics, educate as cheaply as we can because we can’t compete going to export the majority of our best students anyway.

A little too defeatist for me. Perhaps you secretly want South Dakota to lose the Global competition for developing and attracting talent leading to wealth creation.