In collaboration with the South Dakota Board of Regents, DSU implemented a formal peer selection process.  This process involved two key phases:

Phase 1:  An initial screening conducted by the system office:  By filtering and cluster anlyzing IPEDS data, a full list of each institution’s universe of potential peers would be culled to a short list of roughly 15-25 plausible peers.

Phase 2:  Final selection based on campus-level review:  Each university would examine its short list of plausible peers and designate 5-10 of these institutions as final peers.

For a detailed description of each step, please click here.  Below is a list of the criteria used in the peer selection process.

• Enrollment
• Carnegie Classification
• Academic emphasis (computers)
• STEM Degrees (%)
• Total core revenue per FTE
• ACT scores
• Pell recipients (%)

The table below indicates the peers used in various studies.

Institution

University of Illinois at Springfield, IL

Arizona State University-Polytechnic, AZ

University of Alabama in Huntsville, AL

University of Maryland-Baltimore County, MD

University of Michigan-Dearborn, MI

WV University Institute of Technology, WV