POLICY ON ADMISSION IS DEBATED

Southeast Missouri State University Regent Mark Pelts has proposed creation of a community college division at the school.

At Friday's meeting of the Board of Regents, Pelts suggested such a division would allow students who don't meet the new, tougher admission requirements an opportunity to go to college.

He said such a system is needed because there is no community college located in the Cape Girardeau region.

"We've got the buildings; we've got the teaching talent. I wouldn't say there wouldn't be any additional funding needed. There would be some," Pelts said Saturday in a telephone interview from his Kennett home.

Pelts' suggestion came at a lengthy regents meeting punctuated by the president of the board, Carl Ben Bidewell of Poplar Bluff, cutting off comment from a Sikeston educator who tried to briefly voice her views about Southeast's admissions policies.

Also present at the meeting, held in the University Center Ballroom, was Loretta Schneider, assistant director of career planning and placement at Southeast.

Schneider, who is also concerned about the tougher admissions policies, did not speak at the meeting.

Afterward, she said many people, including university personnel, don't attend regents meetings because they don't feel their input is welcomed.

"I think it would be a healthier academic environment if faculty and staff felt more comfortable in attending the regents meetings and getting on the agenda and making presentations about concerns," said Schneider.

At Friday's meeting, the regents once again discussed how to categorize the university in terms of admissions.

The Missouri Coordinating Board for Higher Education has instructed each institution to define its admissions policy as highly selective, selective, moderately selective or open enrollment, on the basis of certain state standards.

Southeast officials and the regents have focused on the moderately selective category, although no final decision has been made. That's expected to come later this spring.

Under a statewide plan, moderately selective institutions will automatically admit students with ACT scores of 21 or better. Students with scores of 18, 19, or 20 will be admitted if they are in the upper two-thirds of their high school class.

University officials have repeatedly said that the raising of admissions requirements at the school in recent years already places it near the moderately selective level.

"Presently, we are yielding a moderately selective student body," said Kala Stroup, Southeast's president.

As a result of tougher admission standards, Southeast has turned away about 700 people in the last two years who have sought to enroll.

In a printed statement to the board, Stroup said: "Expecting university students to be able to read college level material, to write competently in the English language and to understand the basics of mathematics is not undemocratic or elitist.

"Students who do not have this basic level of preparation have a very slim chance of succeeding at any university. It is only those unprepared students to whom admission is presently being denied and this would continue to be the case if Southeast were to choose the moderately selective category," she said.

Stroup told the regents that "we have almost total agreement on the campus so far" in support of the university being a moderately selective institution.

But Pelts and others have expressed concern about closing the door of higher education in Southeast Missouri, where there are few junior colleges and the university is the only four-year institution.

"Let's not just turn folks away," Pelts said Saturday.

Elois Mickens of Sikeston, who heads a literacy program in the Missouri Bootheel, attempted to voice her concerns at Friday afternoon's meeting.

A former assistant director of admissions for the University of Colorado at Boulder, Mickens told the regents she was concerned that raising admission standards would deny access to a college education for many Southeast Missouri residents.

Bidewell interrupted her several times and explained that the regents have previously discussed the issue. He then quickly called a halt to the discussion, only minutes after Mickens began speaking.

Outside the meeting room, Mickens said admission policies are closing the door on higher education for many of the region's rural and minority residents.

Rural schools, she said, don't have the economic base to offer the high school courses needed to meet university admissions requirements.

She complained about the way she was treated at the meeting.

"I think that Southeast Missouri State University probably deserves better than the kind of rudeness that was presented in that room."

But Bidewell said later that regents meetings are not designed to allow those in the audience to simply voice their views. "It is not an open forum."

Schneider, who previously served on the Cape Girardeau City Council, said she believes the university community and the region would be better served by regents meetings that were run more like council meetings, where citizens would have a chance to speak their mind.

But Regent Donald Harrison of Cape Girardeau said Saturday that the Board of Regents is not a city council.

"I think it is a different situation altogether," he maintained. "I think at our meetings, which are much less frequent, we have to have orderliness and people should make arrangements in advance and state what the purpose of the discussion is in advance."

As to Bidewell's actions, Harrison said, "When we have a very busy meeting like that, we can't have people appear just unannounced."

Pelts agreed that the board needs to abide by rules of order. But he suggested the board needs to adopt a written policy outlining procedures for the public to communicate its concerns to the regents.

Pelts said he would be concerned if people feel excluded from regents meetings.

As to the admissions issue, Pelts said he's opposed to having to define Southeast by admissions categories. "I hate for the university to be put in a box."

He said, however, that the university has little choice but to operate as a moderately selective school.

"It is clear that we had to be moderately selective because if we had gone with an open enrollment, we would have backed off of requirements that we already had," said Pelts.

In addition, he said, as an open enrollment school, the state would likely not allow the university to offer advanced programs. "We would probably also lose funding," he pointed out.

Such categories will be defined partly on the basis of student graduation rates, something Pelts strongly disagrees with.

"You cannot judge a university by what percentage of its students you graduate within six years."

Pelts said he has a number of friends who attended Southeast but never graduated. He maintained they are better off for having been exposed to the university environment.

"The coordinating board wants to make better use of the community colleges in Missouri," said Pelts.

That works great, he said, if there's a community college in a particular area. But in the Cape Girardeau region, there is no community college within a reasonable driving distance.

As a result, Pelts said the university needs to have a community college division, a view echoed by Schneider.

Schneider said Southeast needs to "find some way to maintain quality and still have open access, and I think that's what we would be doing with a community college or a college of technical careers."

Stroup said the state currently has no mechanism to fund a community college division within a university.

Both Pelts and Harrison said they believe the university should explore further the idea of setting up a college division.

Harrison pointed out that the regents have yet to make a final decision on the admissions issue and are concerned about the lack of a junior college in the immediate area.

"Regardless of what we vote on as an admissions policy," said Harrison, "the door is certainly not closed. We are not unaware of the need of those who fail to qualify, and it certainly can be addressed and will be addressed in the future."