Video: North Dakota University Spending Up Half A Billion To Educate Just 3,000 More Students

Valley News Live’s Chris Berg had a great segment last night about the recent tuition hikes in the North Dakota University System. Using some data he pulled from SAB, among other sources, he pointed out that the university system has added nearly as many administrators as new students.

He reached that conclusion from these two graphics we use often from SAB. The first is a comparison of instructional employees vs. non-instructional employees based on data collected by Legislative Council. As you can see, the number of non-instructional employees has grown a lot faster than the number of instructional employees:

The second is this chart, published by Legislative Council, comparing legislative general appropriations to higher education compared to tuition. Since 2003-05 biennium, appropriations have grown at an average of 16.2 percent per year while enrollment has grown just 2.1 percent.

North Dakota is now spending a half billion more per biennium from a decade ago to educate roughly 3,000 more students:

These are the facts. And yet, all we hear from the universities is how they are chronically underfunded and so need more tax dollars, and more tuition dollars, every single year.