FARGO, ND – “North Dakota is the poster child of everything that’s wrong with public policy in higher ed,” said Dr. Richard Vedder an economist with Ohio University and a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute. Vedder has studied higher education in North Dakota on behalf of the North Dakota Policy Council and says the recent enrollment scandal at Dickinson State University is evidence that the state has a “bubble.”
“At NDSU and the University of North Dakota you have among the highest percentage of out of state students in the nation,” Vedder said. “The idea is that if we bring people in from Minnesota it will promote economic growth. I’ve never been able to figure out quite why that’s the case.”
Vedder said there’s too much emphasis on pushing kids into college. “We are telling high school kids ‘you’ve got to go to college’ when we have 80,000 bartenders in the United States with college degrees, 19,000 parking lot attendants with college degrees, 300,000 waiters and waitresses with college degree.” Overall, Vedder says there are “17 million Americans with college degrees in jobs that are traditionally reserved for people with high school diplomas.”
“We have a problem.”
“While the state is well above national averages in public spending on higher education, it is below that average in terms of the percentage of the adult population with college degrees,” wrote Vedder in the NDPC study. “While a modestly larger proportion of 18 to 24 year old North Dakotans are in college than the national average, that does not translate into more adult college graduates.”
Vedder also noted that many students educated in North Dakota leave after they obtain their degrees. “Census Bureau data reveal that from 1995 to 2000, North Dakota led the nation in the out migration rate of young college educated citizens. I doubt that migration patterns have altered dramatically since.”
The North Dakota University System has won praise from some quarters for attracting a large number of students from other parts of the country. A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that 55% of the 14,500 students enrolled at North Dakota State University are from outside of North Dakota, but critics point out that NDSU attracts these students by tuition waivers which undermine’s the university’s fiscal situation.
According to numbers from the university system, last year NDSU waived nearly $15.3 million in tuition with 20% of enrolled students receiving a full or partial waiver. That number was an increase of $2.26 million over the previous year and represents 21.46% of the university’s tuition income.
“Dr. Vedder’s work for the North Dakota Policy Council has shown that our policy is to bring in kids from other states, educate them cheaply, and drive them out of the state with our economic policies,” said Brett Narloch of the North Dakota Policy Council. “We have to keep in mind that every dollar the state government gives to non-resident students is a dollar taken from productive people and businesses.”
