SEMO AMONG SCHOOLS LIMITING ENROLLMENT

While Southeast Missouri State University and most other public, four-year colleges in Missouri have decided on more restrictive admissions, Central Missouri State University is bucking the trend.

The Warrensburg campus hasn't adopted the admissions criteria outlined by the Missouri Coordinating Board for Higher Education.

Central is listed as undeclared in its admissions category. The other four-year schools have followed CBHE policy, listing their institutions as having open enrollment, or being highly selective, selective or moderately selective in admitting students.

The coordinating board wants colleges to meet the admission standards for their freshman classes by the fall of 1996 or 1997.

Coordinating Board officials view Central's admission policy as one of open enrollment. But Central officials say their school is selective, just not according to the same standards as those outlined by the coordinating board.

"We do not consider ourselves open because we deny admissions," said Delores Hudson, director of admissions for the Warrensburg school.

Hudson said Central doesn't follow rigid admissions standards but attempts to look at the individual applicant as well as test scores.

"We look at the transcript," she said. "A student might have done horrible in their freshman or sophomore year, but then makes good grades in their junior or senior year."

Hudson said Central is willing to take a chance on at-risk students.

But Central, like Missouri's other public colleges, is strengthening its admission standards in terms of a required high school curriculum. As of 1996, all of the public, four-year colleges will require students to have taken a core curriculum in order to enroll.

That could pose a problem for some students. In 1992, only 32 percent of the students who took the ACT college entrance exam test in Southeast Missouri had taken the core curriculum in high school.

Kala Stroup, Southeast's president, said colleges are forced to restrict admissions because of limited state funding.

"Really, this is an academic restructuring in the state of Missouri," said Stroup.

When voters defeated Proposition B in November 1991, Missouri's colleges lost a chance for increased funding.

As a result, the state's colleges elected to restrict enrollment rather than cut back on the quality of their programs, said Stroup.

As it has moved to the moderately selective category in recent years, Southeast has denied admission to hundreds of students.

Mark Pelts, a Kennett lawyer who recently announced he will resign from the Board of Regents, has long voiced concern about the coordinating board's efforts to force colleges and universities to restrict admissions.

Pelts worries that some Southeast Missouri residents are being denied a college education or must look to other schools outside the region.

Southeast is the only four-year college in the region. Much of Southeast Missouri isn't served by a community college.

Pelts has suggested the university look at establishing a junior college division, a move that would require legislative action.

He said state education officials are more interested in reducing the college dropout rate than in offering an education to all citizens.