South Dakota Free Tuition for Wartime Veterans

Section 13-55-2 is South Dakota's own tuition entitlement, and it is measured in service rather than in semesters. A person residing in the state who is a veteran under 33A-2-1 and 33A-2-2 may pursue any undergraduate course at a Board of Regents institution or any course at a technical college without paying tuition, for each month of qualified service or major fraction of a month. No eligible veteran gets less than one academic year, and none gets more than four. The section has a second door that is easy to miss because it is not about military service at all. It also reaches a person "who performed active war service, such as nursing or assisting in the care of soldiers and sailors in any government hospital, field, or camp, as a member of the Red Cross or any other similar organization engaged in war relief work which has been recognized and approved by the government of the United States", during any of the periods or combat operations in 33A-2-2. A civilian Red Cross nurse or aid worker who served in a war zone inside one of those periods is entitled on the same month-for-month terms. The Board of Regents' military tuition page mentions this route as "active war service"; the earlier version of this entry did not. Where the veteran lived when they entered the service does not matter. The section says so expressly, and applies the same rule to active war service. What matters is residing in the state now and qualifying for resident tuition, which the companion sections in chapter 13-53 make easy for a veteran. It is tuition only. Course and school fees remain payable, which at a South Dakota public institution is a meaningful share of the bill. The relationship with the GI Bill is the part to get right, and it is the opposite of the National Guard tuition rule in the same state. No benefit may be provided under this section until the applicant has applied all federal tuition benefits, and the Board of Regents or the technical institute must verify that federal benefits have been exhausted before drawing state funds. This is the backstop that starts when Chapter 33 entitlement runs out, not a top-up alongside it. The National Guard benefit in 33-6-5, by contrast, was amended in 2023 to define "federal tuition benefit" as Department of Defense, Army or Air Force tuition assistance and to exclude anything from the Department of Veterans Affairs, so a Guard member's GI Bill does not offset the state benefit at all. Same state, same academic year, opposite treatment of the same federal entitlement. Section 13-55-4, which has not been touched since 1966, says flatly that 13-55-2 "shall not be applicable" if the person is entitled under an act of Congress to have tuition paid by the United States. Read alone that would disqualify anyone holding GI Bill entitlement outright, which is not how the 2020 amendment to 13-55-2 reads or how the Board of Regents administers it. The two sit in the same chapter and a veteran who is told no should ask which one is being applied. The ten percent floor, and where it does and does not bite. A veteran who qualifies as a wartime veteran under 33A-2-2 solely because of a service-connected disability, that is, through subdivision (8) rather than through a war period or a campaign medal, may receive free tuition only if the VA rating is ten percent or greater. A veteran who served in one of the listed periods reaches the entitlement with no rating at all. When it can be used. Section 13-55-3 lets the benefit be used at any time after the end of the qualifying period the veteran served in, after the end of the period of eligibility for the medal relied on, or after the date the veteran was rated ten percent or more disabled. There is no delimiting date of the kind the federal programs impose. One older provision sits alongside it. Section 13-28-14 entitles any honorably discharged resident, regardless of age, to all the privileges of the public schools of the district, subject to the same federal-benefits condition. It is a K-12 provision and predates the GED, and it is the statutory ancestor of the honorary high school diploma in 33A-2-34.