by Bob Mercer, Sioux City Journal
When they were built in Rapid City, Sioux Falls and Pierre, South Dakota’s public university centers seemed to meet a vexing need. But those centers aren’t drawing students as well as education officials hoped, while Internet courses and other distance-education classes offered by the six traditional state universities set records again in the past year. The state Board of Regents received reports Wednesday that suggested distance education is competing against the centers for enrollment. The centers concept was developed a decade ago as a mechanism to deliver courses in cities with large populations of adults. That was before Internet courses swept the nation. The university centers show the effect. Unduplicated headcounts decreased at two of the university centers from fall 2009 to fall 2013. Sioux Falls dropped from 2,275 to 1,859; Pierre slid from 133 to 81.
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