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Online out-of-state students bring formula impact and revenue but raise accountability questions
Summary
Commissioner Sanford and campus leaders reported that remote nonresident (online out-of-state) credits widened the funding base and, after exclusions and formula runs, produced a roughly $22 million impact in the formula; UND and Bismarck State described industry-sponsored and military-affiliated online students as revenue sources that sustain programs, while legislators asked for clearer data and the campus-level program breakdowns.
Brent Sanford, the Commissioner of Higher Education, presented enrollment breakdowns and introduced the committee’s deeper look at online out-of-state students (OSOS). He said North Dakota’s headcount was 47,522 (36,150 FTE) and that dual-credit, part-time and online students drive divergence between headcount and FTE. Sanford and system staff described methodological choices for isolating OSOS students (excluding contiguous states on the assumption that many contiguous-state students become residents) and reported that applying that methodology to biennial credits and plugging the result into the funding formula yielded a roughly $22,000,000 amount that would be associated with remote nonresident credit production under the formula.
Dan Longane, interim president of Bismarck State College, told the committee that his institution’s OSOS population is concentrated in energy-sector technical and certificate work. He said many of those non-degree students are industry-sponsored, part-time workers seeking specific skill upgrades; because these programs require specialized equipment and costly online learning modules, removing OSOS support could raise per-student costs and threaten program viability. Longane said some OSOS students later convert to degree-seeking status; others remain non-degree to meet employer training needs.
Carla (UND presenter) emphasized UND’s long history in distance education and said her institution relies on national-scale online enrollment for program viability in engineering and other fields. In her presentation she stated that UND expects substantial tuition and fee revenue from online nonresident students in the current biennium (the slides and spoken remarks linked that to a figure the presenter described as equating to “approximately 73 and a half million dollars” in tuition and fees coming to the state and to Grand Forks). UND also said online out-of-state students pay mandatory state student fees and that military-affiliated students form a meaningful portion of their online population.
Legislators asked follow-ups: how many OSOS are full-time vs. part-time, which specific programs enroll the students, how many are non-degree vs. degree-seeking, and how many OSOS students later move to North Dakota or otherwise supply workforce gains. Committee members flagged anomalies in small-program counts (where one or two remote students show up in a program) and asked the system office for campus-level breakout of the $22 million calculation and of the top programs by institution so lawmakers can evaluate whether the state is subsidizing programs that do not yield in-state workforce benefits.
The presenters committed to supplying campus breakouts of OSOS credits and the biennial formula-run detail the committee requested.
Ending: The committee asked the system office and campuses for a program-by-program and campus-by-campus reconciliation of OSOS credits, tuition rates applied (in-state vs out-of-state treatment), and any waivers or differentials used by campuses.
