Minnesota Launching Free Tuition Fall 2024; Does South Dakota Share North Dakota’s Concern?

Starting in fall 2024, Minnesota families making under $80K a year can send their kids to Minnesota colleges for free. The North Star Promise Scholarship Program, approved by the Minnesota Legislature and signed into law by Governor Tim Walz in May, will cover any in-state tuition and fees not covered by scholarships or other financial aid at Minnesota’s public universities and colleges and tribal colleges. Recipients have to keep their grades up (generally, “Satisfactory Academic Progress” means keeping a cumulative GPA of 2.0 and earning two-thirds of the credits one attempts) and be enrolled in a program that leads to a degree. North Star Promise will cover tuition and fees for up to 120 credits.

15,000 to 20,000 Minnesotans may qualify for the North Star Promise each year. North Dakota’s higher education system figures 1,400 of those eligible Minnesotans may be going to North Dakota schools right now, and the prospect of this price competition has North Dakota freaking out:

“This has catastrophic implications,” said David Cook, North Dakota State University’s president, at a recent State Board of Higher Education meeting. “This is a very serious situation for us.”

Minnesota students make up close to half the student body at North Dakota State in Fargo, their No. 1 out-of-state pick in their first year. They accounted for nearly 40% of the first-year students at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks and North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton in fall 2021.

“Probably half of our football team comes from Minnesota, so that’s kind of a big deal to us,” College of Science President Rod Flanigan said [Jack Dura and Steve Karnowski, “North Dakota University Leaders Fear ‘Catastrophic Implications’ of Minnesota’s New Free Tuition Plan,” AP, 2023.07.02].

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In Fiscal Year 2023, the South Dakota Board of Regents reported that Minnesota had the highest undergraduate resident tuition in the region, $2,310 more than North Dakota’s and $2,237 more than South Dakota’s. Total resident university costs, including room and board, were also highest in Minnesota.

Minnesota students made up nearly 14% of enrollment in South Dakota’s public universities in fall 2019. If even a third of our universities’ Minnesota students qualify for the North Star Promise, that’s over a thousand students to whom Minnesota can make a really compelling sales pitch to come home for a cheaper degree.

Maybe South Dakota’s Regents and lawmakers need to take up the concern we’re hearing to our north and figure out a way to help South Dakota compete with Minnesota’s free tuition come fall 2024.