‘Focus on being students’ - MNWest and SMSU plan to continue student support efforts
- Heather Harman
- Jan 15, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 22, 2025
The Minnesota higher education system has plans to continue supporting its students through a variety of resources and services, and will do so in the new biennium.
“There is a safety net for (students) over here (in Minnesota),” Minnesota State Chancellor Scott Olson said. “They can focus on being students.”
Southwest Minnesota State University President Kumara Jayasuriya and Minnesota West Community and Technical College President Terry Gaalswyk sat down with Olson in Marshall on Monday to discuss the Fiscal Year 2026-27 budget proposal.
The Minnesota State education system is requesting $465 million to be shared among its 26 colleges and seven universities, in sections of student support, workforce-focused support, system operations and critical infrastructure.
Depending on how much is awarded, $40 million would be dedicated to student support needs. This would assist with essential and basic need resources, health services, emergency grants, textbooks, courses and more.
“That was a loud and clear thing from students, is mental health services, and food banks on campus,” Olson said. “These kind of things allow students, who otherwise maybe couldn’t be college students, to actually be college students.”
Mantra Health is a system-wide digital mental health provider that is available to Minnesota students. It offers therapy, self-care courses and crisis support.
“For a student, a mental health crisis isn’t always going to occur between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on a weekday … It could well be, probably more likely, in the early hours on a Saturday morning,” Olson said. “The beauty of this Mantra telemedicine is, it’s a live human being you’re interacting with, but it’s twenty-four-seven, three-hundred-sixty-five [days]. It’s there for our students when the student needs it.
President Jayasuriya acknowledged Mantra is well-received at SMSU.
“That was a game changer for SMSU, Mantra Health … For a student who needs an appointment, they had to wait two weeks before this,” Jayasuriya said. “That really changed the dynamics on campus.”
Gaalswyk said MNWest has continued to build its wraparound services, not just with mental health, wellness and career development, but with basic needs as well.
“We built out connections in our communities for housing and transportation. We’ve assisted with food pantries on our campuses, we have emergency funds available to students. Sometimes students are a dead car battery away from being able to continue their education,” Gaalswyk said. “We’ve also recently built out connections with legal firms to help, should students have questions about particular legal issues they might be facing … It’s not only the academics that we can provide a system with, but a whole series of wraparound services that are available.”
MNWest and SMSU will also continue to work with their local high school students as well, offering them to begin college courses while finishing their high school degrees, as another way to save costs and benefit from Minnesota State support services.
“Both the University and Minnesota West have strong High School relationships, and we work very closely with our faculty and the high school teachers in regards to providing opportunities for high school students,” Gaalswyk said. “The young people in the region that have a relationship either with the university or the two year college, they’re much more likely to stay, live and continue their education within the region, and that difference is statistically significant.”
Both institutions are also standing well with enrollment numbers, and each saw significant increase in enrollment this school year. SMSU saw a 14.9% total headcount increase for Fall 2024 from last year, and Gaalswyk said MNWest has seen its best growth since 2011.
In addition to positive enrollment and student support resources, Olson revealed that Minnesota tuition rates across colleges and universities have been kept below average rate of inflation.
Inflation rates have increased on average 2.8% each year since fiscal year 2014, and Minnesota colleges and universities saw on average a 1.7% increase.
In the last 10 years, Minnesota colleges like MNWest, have increased about 1.3% percent each year, but didn’t see a rate increase in 2024.
“Part of the reason people aren’t going [to college] is they imagine, because the national narrative is out of control tuition, runaway tuition … But, our rates of increased tuition over time was less than the simple rate of inflation,” Olson said. “At least when it comes to these institutions, that’s a false narrative. It’s below inflation.”
The legislative session began Tuesday and ends May 19. The Board of Trustees will hear the first reading of the fiscal year 2026 budgets on May 20, and approvals will be made July 17 and 18.
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