AREA COLLEGE ENROLLMENTS ABOVE 14,000

More than 14,000 students are enrolled for the fall semester at three higher-education institutions in Southeast Missouri, including more than 8,300 at Southeast Missouri State University.

An estimated 3,000 students are enrolled at Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff and nearly 2,700 are enrolled in classes at the Mineral Area Community College at Flat River.

Enrollment figures at Southeast and Three Rivers Community College (TRCC) include students enrolled in classes offered by the two schools at the Bootheel Education Center in Malden.

Final fall enrollment figures won't be known for several weeks, officials at all three institutions said.

Over the past decade, enrollment at Southeast generally has remained under 9,000. While enrollment has remained relatively stable at Southeast, the two community colleges have witnessed tremendous growth over the decade.

The Bootheel Education Center also has experienced increased enrollment since it opened in 1988.

Three Rivers is headed for a fourth consecutive year of record growth, officials at the community college said.

From the 1980 fall semester to the 1990 fall semester, enrollment at TRCC increased from 1,689 to 2,668.

At Mineral Area College, enrollment has climbed from 1,396 in fall 1980 to 2,694 for the 1990 fall semester, said Barbara Bockenkamp, the college's registrar.

Bockenkamp predicted enrollment this fall will be about the same as last fall, remaining at under 2,700. She said the enrollment figure would include an estimated 250 inmates at the Farmington Correctional Center who take courses offered at the prison.

"I don't think we are going to show a big growth this year as we have in past years," she said Tuesday.

Over the past decade, Bockenkamp said, the community college has experienced increased enrollment and a rise in credit hours taken because of such things as job retraining programs.

"We do a lot of that here," she said. "We have trained a lot of corrections officers because of the corrections facilities in Potosi and Farmington."

Bockenkamp said about a third of Mineral Area's students end up transferring to a four-year institution to complete degree work, another third are enrolled in one- or two-year vocational-type programs, and the other third are enrolled in courses for their own enjoyment or "to get on a higher pay scale at work."

At TRCC, Mineral Area and the Bootheel Education Center, most of the students work.

About 75 percent of TRCC students hold jobs and more than half of that number work between 21 and 40 hours a week, said Dan Opalewski, director of student services at the school.

An increasing number of non-traditional students have enrolled at Mineral Area College, Bockenkamp said. "We worked really hard in getting students to come to school, in expanding off-campus programs and weekend programs."

The average age of students at Mineral Area is 27 or 28, she said.

But she said: "I would think that our adult population may have peaked and is probably going to settle in. I think our (future) growth might be more with traditional students."

With increasingly higher tuition and tougher admission standards at Missouri's four-year institutions, more students right out of high school may look to begin their higher education at a community college, said Bockenkamp.

Art Wallhausen, assistant to the president at Southeast, said Tuesday, "I don't think there is any doubt that nationwide there is a trend toward enrollment in community colleges." They are closer to home; they are less expensive than four-year institutions, he said.

At Mineral Area, for example, tuition is $27 per credit hour for in-district residents and $39 per credit hour for out-of-district residents. Both rates are considerably lower than the $69-per-credit-hour fee charged Missouri residents taking undergraduate courses at Southeast.

Community colleges benefit from special tax levies within the districts they serve.

At the Bootheel Education Center in Malden, 750 students were enrolled last fall and about 800 this spring. While no figures are in yet, enrollment at the center is expected to be higher this fall, said Karen Wheeler, its director. "We know that we will go over the 800 figure," she said.

She said the center offers between 45 and 50 credit hours of courses a semester as well as non-credit workshops and seminars. "We are now offering a comparable number of day and evening classes," she said.

The majority of classes are offered by TRCC, with Southeast generally offering about 10 classes, she said.

Most of the students are enrolled in classes offered by TRCC. In fall 1990, for example, 86 students were enrolled in courses offered by Southeast and 586 were enrolled in TRCC classes at the center. The remaining 78 students were enrolled in classes at the Malden center offered by the University of Missouri, Wheeler said.

She said the center has seen enrollment steadily increase since its opening in spring 1988, when fewer than 150 students were enrolled.

"Every semester we are pleasantly surprised by the increase in enrollment," said Wheeler. She said the increasing enrollment shows "there is a need for higher education here in the Bootheel.

"Seventy-five to 80 percent of our students are non-traditional," she said. "Most of those students for a variety of reasons could not have attended post-secondary education were it not for the Bootheel Education Center.

"It is a very friendly place for students to come, particularly for those entering school later in life," said Wheeler. "We believe we make school less frightening."

(Some information for this story was provided by Ron Smith, a staff writer for the Daily American Republic newspaper in Poplar Bluff.)