SEMO calls costs study dead wrong

Southeast Missouri State University officials are at odds with a national study that says the school and most others in the nation aren't affordable for low-income students.

The findings of the year-old Lumina Foundation for Education have sparked sharp criticism from higher education groups.

The foundation rated nearly 3,000 colleges and universities. Only Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Kentucky and Wyoming offer four-year public colleges that are affordable to low-income people without financial aid, the study concluded.

But Art Wallhausen, associate to the president at Southeast, said the study is flawed. It's based on "broad generalizations and averages," he said.

The Lumina study doesn't take into account that Southeast is one of only a few schools nationwide that operates a textbook rental system which saves students hundreds of dollars a year, Wallhausen said.

Critics say the study flies in the face of reality: 15 million people from all income levels attend college at two- and four-year schools nationwide.

"Enrollments go up every single year," said Terry Hartle of the American Council on Education. "If this is correct, there are a lot of people in higher education that aren't supposed to be there."

Wallhausen said there are a number of problems with the study's conclusions about the Cape Girardeau school.

In fiscal year 1999, incidental and general fees at Southeast totaled $103.50 a credit hour while those at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield totaled $109.42. "Yet the Lumina study ranks Southwest as affordable with loans and Southeast as unaffordable for low-income students," Wallhausen wrote in response to the study.

He wrote that the study doesn't reflect the fact that since fiscal year 1995, the average annual fee increase at Southeast, 4.4 percent, has been the lowest of any of the state's major four-year schools while increases at Southwest and Central Missouri State University have averaged over 7 percent per year during the same period.

"Southeast students taking 12 credit hours pay $366 more this year than they did in fiscal year 1995 while students at Central pay $492 more and those at Southwest pay $564 more," he wrote.

But the study placed Central in the "affordable with loans" category along with Southwest.

Wallhausen wrote that the study unfairly places Southeast in the same category as the University of Missouri campuses in St. Louis and Columbia, where fees have risen more than twice as much.

Wallhausen said Southeast officials worry that applying an "unaffordable" label to the school can discourage students from looking at ways to finance a college education with loans and other financial aid.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

[Click here to read the press release issued by Southeast.]