The Black Hills State University Student to Faculty Ratio & Faculty Composition

Does Black Hills State University have a good student to faculty ratio?

Use the student to faculty ratio, as well as the faculty composition to get an idea of how much attention you'll receive as an individual student at Black Hills State University.

Poor Student to Faculty Ratio

Black Hills State University, with 20 students for every instructional faculty member, ranks among the lowest in comparison to the national average of 14:1. This ratio indicates that the number of students split between the same faculty is much higher than normal, and could mean students will experience larger class sizes and fewer opportunities to connect with professors, especially in introductory courses.

Breakdown of Instructional Staff

The following table shows all the employees the school considers instructional, and therefore, part of the above student-to-faculty ratio. These include both those employees designated as either "primarily instructional" or as "instructional combined with research/public service". It does not include employees that have been identified by Black Hills State University as primarily performing research or public service.

Reliance on Part-Time Teachers is About Average

At Black Hills State University, 58.0% of the teaching staff are full time, which is on average when compared nationally.

Lower Than Average Use of Adjuncts or Part-Time Teachers

At Black Hills State University, only 41.0% of the teaching staff are part-time non-faculty or non-tenure track faculty. This use of adjuncts is low, below the national average of 48.1%, which could be indicative of Black Hills State University's commitment to building a strong, long-term instructional team.

Colleges often use part-time professors and adjuncts to teach courses, rather than full-time faculty. This hiring practice is primarily a way to save money amid increasingly tight budgets. However, it is a controversial practice with strong views on either side. We encourage you to understand this topic more deeply, and how the colleges you are interested in approach faculty hiring. It's your education and your money on the line. Make sure you know what you are getting for it.

Additional Information

• What is an Adjunct?

  On this page, we refer to an adjunct teacher or a part-time teacher interchangeably, although each school may have a slightly different definition. In short, an adjunct professor can either work full-time or part-time during a school semester, but they have no contract or a contract that lasts only a short amount of time. To come up with the numbers for this page, we use the total number of part-time non-faculty and non-tenure track faculty to represent the count of adjuncts for the college or university.

You May End Up Getting Taught by a Grad Assistant

Black Hills State University has 8 instructional graduate assistants that teach or provide teaching-related duties. These responsibilities could range from entirely teaching lower-level courses themselves, to assisting professors by developing teaching materials, preparing or giving exams and grading student work. We suggest you ask the college to what extent graduate assistants are relied on for instruction, so you know what you are paying for.

Additionally, the school has 4 non-instructional graduate assistants.