Southeast enrollment flat on first day

It's not the academic buildings or the dorm rooms that students notice first. It's the sea of cars that fill every available parking spot at Southeast Missouri State University.

"It seems like there is no parking," said Sarah Daniels, a senior from St. Louis.

"If you find a place to park halfway close to your dorm, you are lucky," said freshman Andrew DeField of Charleston, Mo.

DeField and Daniels are among 7,865 undergraduates enrolled at Southeast this fall, up 95 from a year ago.

But overall enrollment at the Cape Girardeau school dipped by eight students, the result of a drop in the number of graduate students, school officials said.

The head count on the first day of classes Monday stood at 8,745. A total of 880 of those were graduate students, officials said. Last fall, there were 983 graduate students enrolled when the school year began.

The past two fall semesters at Southeast have had record enrollments. Final fall enrollment last year after the first four weeks of class totaled 9,534, up nearly 2 percent from fall 2001.

Dennis Holt, vice president for administration and enrollment management at Southeast, isn't sure what the final total will be this year but that it could be close to last year's figure.

Enrollment typically grows by 700 to 1,000 students by the final enrollment date four weeks into the semester, which this year is Sept. 19.

Holt said population growth in eastern Missouri and Southern Illinois is flat, so there won't be an increase in college-age residents from which to draw.

"Any growth we are going to have is due to programs and special recruitment efforts," said Holt. "There are no demographics driving enrollment growth."

The number of beginning freshmen totaled 1,500, down 5.5 percent from a year ago.

Returning freshmen totaled 787, down 6.8 percent from fall 2002.

But Southeast has more sophomores, juniors and seniors. The sophomore head count stood at 1,599 on the first day of classes, up 1.3 percent. The university had 1,639 juniors, up 2.2 percent from fall 2002 and 2,042 seniors, up 8.7 percent.

The undergraduate total also includes other categories of students, including high schoolers who are dually enrolled in classes.

Southeast began the fall semester with 502 transfer students, up from 489 a year ago.

Thomas Warren, a sophomore from Sikeston, Mo., who lives in Towers South residence hall, said the dorm floors and the classrooms seem just as crowded as last year.

The parking lots are jammed "like Wal-Mart on a busy day," he said as he left the campus bookstore in the University Center.

Some students, like Tufi Malauula of Hawaii, had no complaints. "I thought it was going to be worse," she said.

A junior, she transferred to Southeast from the University of Hawaii, a much larger school.

Even with a slight dip in first-day enrollment, school officials continue to be upbeat about the university's goal of reaching the 10,000 enrollment figure.

"There's no reason we couldn't get close to that over the next six or seven years," Holt said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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