NDSCS President John Richman addresses the club
Two issues were on North Dakota State College of Science (NDSCS) President John Richman’s mind when he addressed the Wahpeton Rotary club during their regular meeting at Prante’s on Tuesday September 2, 2014. First was that the public needed education on the upcoming Constitutional Measure 3 on the upcoming North Dakota ballot and second was the Fargo campus of NDSCS.
Presenting both the pros and cons of Measure 3 Dr. Richman urged all to become well educated on all of the upcoming ballot measures. Measure 3 is a bit unusual as it was initiated by the legislative assembly and not a “citizen’s initiative”. If passed it would eliminate the current Higher Board of Education that provides oversight to the eleven public institutions of higher education in the State. Replacing the volunteer Board would be a Commission of three full time paid employees. Who the Commissioners are would be selected in much the same way as the current members of the Higher Education Board are picked. The measure would also remove all of the names and missions of the current institutions from the Constitution and replace them with the names of the cities only ensuring that each of these cities would have a “higher education site” without defining what that might be. This would allow the three commissioners to change the mission of any or all of the current institutions.
The changes were proposed after the volunteer Board was perceived as not simply setting goals for higher education but interfering with how the Chancellor and the eleven Presidents instituted these goals. As one of these paid full time Commissioners must be an academic and one from the business world it is believed that their knowledge base will be better to lead North Dakota education in the future.
The NDSCS Fargo campus is currently overcrowded and a new facility is needed. Aside from the overcrowding there are 8,000 open jobs in Fargo that people need to be trained for and enrollments in the Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo school districts are soaring. Fargo and West Fargo have had this year and project increases for each of the next five years of 500 more kindergarten students each year than planned for. Additionally data shows that 4,000 North Dakota students are crossing the river (giving up their ND State grants) to go to two year colleges close by in Minnesota as it is inconvenient or impossible given their work and/or family schedules to drive to Wahpeton. Unfortunately the move to increase the size of the NDSCS presence in Fargo has led to fears in Wahpeton that Dr. Richman plans to move the Wahpeton campus to Fargo. He emphasized that he has no intention to do so and that it would be illogical to embark on such a plan; the increased size in Fargo is only about the numbers in need of training there.