Contents
South Dakota is the other state in this set where tribal colleges are a structural feature rather than a footnote. Three of its seventeen four-year institutions are tribally controlled land-grant colleges — Oglala Lakota College at Kyle, Sinte Gleska University at Mission, and Sisseton Wahpeton College — and two of them grant master's degrees.
The remaining public universities are governed as a single six-campus group, including a school of mines at Rapid City and a technology-focused university at Madison. Sioux Falls is the private sector's centre of gravity. South Dakota has no institution in the most research-intensive Carnegie category, which is worth knowing if doctoral research is the point of the search.
What this list covers
- 17 four-year degree-granting institutions with a physical campus in South Dakota: 9 public, 6 private nonprofit, 2 for-profit.
- Included: any institution the federal IPEDS directory records as active, degree-granting, at the four-year level, and awarding a bachelor's degree or higher. That covers universities, liberal arts colleges, seminaries, art and music conservatories, health-professions schools, and graduate-only institutions.
- Excluded: community and technical colleges, and any institution whose highest award is an associate degree or a certificate. Two-year institutions are covered on the Ohio page only — see Ohio colleges for the reasoning.
- Excluded: system and administrative offices that hold their own IPEDS identifier but enrol no students.
- This is a directory, not a ranking. No tuition, fee, or aid figure appears on this page. Verify anything here against the institution's own site before you act on it.
Four-year degree-granting institutions
| Institution | City | Control | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Augustana University | Sioux Falls | Private nonprofit | Master's university |
| Black Hills State University | Spearfish | Public | Master's university |
| California Intercontinental University | Sioux Falls | For-profit | Doctoral/professional |
| Dakota State University | Madison | Public | Master's university |
| Dakota Wesleyan University | Mitchell | Private nonprofit | Baccalaureate, diverse fields |
| Institute of Lutheran Theology | Brookings | Private nonprofit | Not classified |
| Kairos University | Sioux Falls | Private nonprofit | Faith-related |
| Mount Marty University | Yankton | Private nonprofit | Master's university |
| National American University-Rapid City | Rapid City | For-profit | Doctoral/professional |
| Northern State University | Aberdeen | Public | Master's university |
| Oglala Lakota College | Kyle | Public | Tribal college; Land-grant |
| Sinte Gleska University | Mission | Public | Tribal college; Land-grant |
| Sisseton Wahpeton College | Sisseton | Public | Tribal college; Land-grant |
| South Dakota School of Mines and Technology | Rapid City | Public | Master's university |
| South Dakota State University | Brookings | Public | Land-grant; Doctoral, high research |
| University of Sioux Falls | Sioux Falls | Private nonprofit | Master's university |
| University of South Dakota | Vermillion | Public | Doctoral, high research |
Public university systems
IPEDS records one public system holding six universities. The three tribal colleges are reported without a system affiliation.
South Dakota Board of Regents
- Black Hills State University
- Dakota State University
- Northern State University
- South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
- South Dakota State University
- University of South Dakota
Reported without a system affiliation
- Oglala Lakota College
- Sinte Gleska University
- Sisseton Wahpeton College
Tuition reciprocity
South Dakota does not participate in the Midwest Student Exchange Program. MSEP is the Midwestern Higher Education Compact's reciprocity scheme, under which a participating public institution may charge a student from another member state no more than 150 per cent of its in-state rate. Eight of the twelve compact states take part — Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, and South Dakota do not, so a student moving into South Dakota from a neighbouring state should not expect an MSEP rate here.
Individual institutions may still run their own border-county or neighbouring state arrangements. Those are set campus by campus; check with the school.
Related pages
- Colleges by state — the other fifty pages.
- Colleges and universities — how the directory is organized and what it deliberately leaves out.
- Ohio colleges — the flagship page, and the only one that covers two-year institutions.
Sources
- NCES IPEDS, Directory information (HD2024) — the 2024–25 collection, the
spine of this table. Institution names, cities, control, level, highest award,
land-grant and HBCU/tribal flags, and system affiliation all come from it.
Downloaded from
nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter; data checked 11 August 2026. - Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, 2021 Basic —
the Notes column, as carried in the IPEDS
C21BASICfield. Checked 11 August - Midwest Student Exchange Program, About MSEP (
msep.mhec.org/about) — the reciprocity section, including the member-state list and the 150 per cent and 10 per cent limits. Checked 11 August 2026. - Wikipedia, List of colleges and universities in South Dakota — used only as a cross-check on coverage, never as the source of a name or a city. Title resolved through the MediaWiki API on 11 August 2026; no redirect, not a disambiguation page.
A caution on currency. HD2024 is the 2024–25 collection, so it is roughly two years behind this page. Colleges close, merge, and rename faster than a federal directory records it. Treat any single entry as a lead to verify, not as proof the institution is still operating.