The North Dakota Board of Higher education has voted to OK financing details for new homes for the presidents of the University of North Dakota and North Dakota State University.

The board, meeting in Minot this morning, voted unanimously to allow NDSU to use nearly $200,000 in money from non-tax funds such as money collected selling soft drinks on campus to pay for cost overruns for the NDSU president's house.

But one board member expressed displeasure with allowing NDSU to use anything but privately-raised funds for the more-than-two million dollar home.

(Jon Jackson, Higher Ed Board Member) "Couple hundred thousand dollars, that's about as much as these institutiions have to say, we're going to give this to student and faculty initiated research projects, whether they're scholarly activity in Poetry or cell biology. It's a bad idea from that standpoint."


The Board of Higher Education had earlier voted to require that no student or taxpayer money be used for the home projects at either NDSU or UND.

The board was told today that UND's Foundation is picking up all of the cost overruns. watch the video | save this article / add to your favorites list