Not quite a year after funds were approved to expand a public university campus in Sioux Falls comes news that a Rapid City lawmaker is talking of closing one of the state's six traditional universities.
Mark Kirkeby said this week he will offer legislation to require a study of the university system to see if it would make sense to shut down one of the state's existing schools.
Big surprise. Big surprise.
It was back at the beginning of this year when the Legislature OK'd millions of dollars to improve and expand the University Center campus at Sioux Falls, where several state colleges have pooled together to offer classes to residents of that city and the surrounding area.
Many opponents have maintained that putting money into that site -- a stack of money was approved to purchase more than 200 acres and to construct buildings -- will come at the expense of the existing state universities. An overriding fear at the time was that eventually, existing colleges will suffer.
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In March, we used this space to wonder what college, given the new emphasis on the new campus at Sioux Falls, will eventually come on the chopping block. We thought the same thing last week, when it was announced that a university center also is being expanded in Rapid City.
Too, we have maintained that with more pressing financial issues facing the state, it's simply bad business to dump more money into university centers when we have a perfectly good college system already in place. Many argue that higher education funding has unfairly taken priority as K-12 funding has suffered.
And now comes the proposal from Kirkeby, who doesn't have a certain college in mind, at least publicly.
Proponents of university centers in towns like Sioux Falls and Rapid City say employees and business/industry leaders are calling for such sites, and residents there are clamoring for access to higher education.
We argue that there already are options available, such as driving to one of the state's nearby public universities (less than an hour away), enrolling in on-line courses or simply attending classes in the institutions that already exist in those cities, such as Augustana and USF in Sioux Falls and South Dakota Tech in Rapid City. These are the exact same options that face potential students who live in Mitchell or Yankton, for instance.
Will Kirkeby's proposal float? Perhaps, since he only wants to investigate the possibilities of closing a public campus. Even he admits that such a closing is unlikely.
We were assured recently by a state lawmaker that university centers won't compete with existing schools. We believe many lawmakers feel that way and will fight to maintain the current system.
But much like the gossip who opens a spicy statement with "I shouldn't be saying this, but ..." Kirkeby has officially gotten the ball rolling in the direction of a campus closure.
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We saw this coming.
