Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
- Engineering crisis
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
In 1968, the South Dakota State Legislature created the Office of Commissioner of Higher Education and specified that one of the first and most important duties was to develop and Academic Master Plan. A committee was formed in June 1969 with seven study groups to develop a master plan. The groups were designated to study admissions, building needs, retention's and transfers, enrollment, financial aid, faculty salaries, and working conditions. The group responsible for studying academic programs and the roles of each institution was known as Committee D.
The plan made many recommendations which applied to public higher education in South Dakota which did not create much controversy. However, a matter which caused major concern on the SDSU campus was the fate of the College of Engineering. The Committee recommended that the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology absorb the SDSU College of Engineering for a projected cost savings of $200,000. This created controversy across the state of South Dakota.