The South Dakota Board of Regents is reviewing more than two-dozen suggestions for making the state’s public university system more efficient. They come from a task force created by state legislators two years ago.
The Senate Bill 55 task force resulted in thirty-five recommendations. They range from agreeing on a single system-wide food contract to telehealth options.
Board of Regents executive director Brian Maher said much of the work on those recommendations are still in progress.
“The purpose for our meeting today is for a lot of you, particularly the task force," Maher said. "To know the work you put into getting us to the recommendation phase of Senate Bill 55 is not a document that was put on a shelf or work that ended once our meeting ended. As a matter of fact, that work is ongoing and continues today.”
Maher said while affordability is a priority for South Dakota institutions, so too is balance.
“When you think of tuition and fees it's easy to say ‘well, we need to lower tuition and lower fees and make this as easy as we can,’ but we also do have a business to run that has expenses tied up in a whole lot of salaries and buildings etcetera," Maher said. "So, how do we weigh those two things?”
One task force subgroup is headed by Heather Forney, system vice president of finance and administration. Forney said the system moving to a single food service provider was among the first items recommended.
“As things stood prior to Senate Bill 55 we had three different food service vendors at the six institutions," Forney said "The thought process that let's try to leverage, get some economies of scale, and see what we might be able to come up with as a system-wide food service contract. One of the nice takeaways from that is the fact the board plans, or meal plans, for students on campus were decreased by five percent this first year.
Forney says the regental system’s economic impact tallies over two-billion dollars, roughly 4% of South Dakota’s economy.