This is an interesting tweet from the Haugaard campaign:
“College students.. help us put South Dakota first!”
Unfortunately, Steve doesn’t feel the same way about putting them first to help them attend college:
And as you’ll note, he’s joined in his opposition to the needs based freedom scholarships was also joined by fellow candidate Taffy Howard.
Senate Bill 171 was to endow the scholarship with $50 million, an investment that has grown nearly four-fold, at $175 million and counting. As noted in a release at the time..
This endowment will allow us to tap into a network of students who are eager to excel in their studies and professional pursuits,” Governor Noem said. “This scholarship will ensure that South Dakota is securing some of the top talent in our colleges and universities. As more and more companies move to our state, we need today’s workforce ready to take on tomorrow’s jobs.”
It’s one way the state is trying to keep top talent in the state, instead of forcing them to go elsewhere.
Interestingly, at the Lincoln County Lincoln Day Dinner as it was related to me, a number of College Republicans were fuming as Haugaard took them aside and was ‘steve-splaining’ why this scholarship was not something the state should do. It went over about as well as you think it would.
And now, a couple months later Steve Haugaard is seeking those same college students to come onto his campaign and volunteer for him.
It’s a good reminder of how he’s going to view them and their educational opportunities if elected.
He’s not looking for “need based” students. Many of those are Democrats.
Will there be an abnormal dress code requirement for the Haugarrd campaign similar to what is worn by women in the Hand Maids Tale?
I heard from a College Republican that, while touring one of the universities this summer, Haugaard was heard to complain that the new residence halls are too nice and they should go back to the 1950s-era spartan dorms. Another winning idea with the kids!
One of the drivers of high college costs has been the Club Med-style amenities some campuses offer.
That stuff costs money.
50 years ago I figured out that for what my two roommates I were paying to live in a single room with paid staff cleaning the bathroom, taking out the trash, shoveling the sidewalks, preparing meals and washing the dishes, we could have rented a multi-room apartment and done all those chores ourselves.
It costs a lot of money to live in a 4-5 star hotel.
“steve-splaining” is a good way to put it. Haugaard has a way of self-righteous lecturing that is extremely off-putting. He knows best because of his superior morality and intellect (in his own mind.
Sounds like a bad quote from Star Trek II – the Wrath of Khan – “Yours is superior (a crew member regarding Khan’s intellect)” Haugaard has always been a pompous, self-centered person. How he rose to be Speaker of the House is beyond me (no one else wanted the job?). He’s better off running as a Far-Right Independent than a Republican who has no desire for compromise or 20th or 21st century thinking.
I don’t like Steve too much and agree with him being quite self-righteous. Noem will handle him easily in the primary. However…
The needs based scholarship idea has been around for a long time and was mostly promoted by higher ed folks and liberals. You can probably dig up bills from many years ago. Only when Mr. Sanford made a huge contribution to the program did it ever make sense. College is very expensive but nobody… seriously, nobody… could ever point to any real statistics showing we were losing our best students because we didn’t have a need based scholarship. The truth of the matter is that the best students have a lot of options – whether they go in state or out of state. Some WANT to go out of state to experience the world and/or a top notch university. Some WANT to stay in state and if they put any effort into seeking scholarships, they can do quite well in South Dakota. Where this scholarship will help is not necessarily with those best students scoring 30 or more on their ACT, or even in the high 20’s, but with the students that are good strong students getting a 24 ACT, who want to stay in South Dakota, but can’t compete for the biggest scholarships taken by the ‘best and brightest.’
So yes this scholarship is a nice addition, but only because it was largely funded by T. Denny. Given choices between other budget items and in most years with a tighter state budget and not all the federal dollars, this would not be a priority and frankly wasn’t when brought up in previous years.