SOUTHEAST'S ENROLLMENT SHOWS AN EARLY DECLINE

When spring semester classes commenced Monday at Southeast Missouri State University, 7,440 students were enrolled.

That's a drop of 220 compared with the first-day enrollment total of 7,660 for the 1992 spring semester, said Art Wallhausen, assistant to the president at Southeast.

But Wallhausen said Tuesday that it's difficult to compare last year's first-day spring enrollment total with this year's.

That's because Southeast, starting with the fall semester, canceled class schedules of students who did not pay their fees prior to the start of the semester.

"Over the weekend, we canceled about 250 schedules for non-payment," said Wallhausen. "A lot of students spent yesterday and today (Tuesday) getting their schedules re-established."

Those students were not listed in first-day enrollment figures, he said.

Wallhausen said university officials will have a more accurate assessment of the enrollment situation once the final census is tabulated in four weeks.

Undergraduate enrollment for this spring semester stood at 6,939 Monday, down 227 from last spring's first-day enrollment total of 7,166.

A total of 501 graduate students were enrolled as of Monday, up seven from last spring, he said.

Enrollment last fall was down slightly over the previous fall semester. And typically, spring semester enrollment lags behind that of the fall semester.

Last fall's final census showed a headcount of 8,444, with 7,803 of those being undergraduates. There were 641 graduate students.

Wallhausen said declining enrollment has been partly due to tighter admission standards. "Over the last couple of years, we have denied admission to about 700 students who would have formerly been admitted."

In addition, demographics plays a part. There's been a declining pool of high school students, Wallhausen said.

"We would rather see the numbers go up, but you are in a readjustment period," he said. "We are near the bottom of the trough, but not quite."

Wallhausen said that statewide, education officials are putting a greater emphasis these days on the quality rather than the number of students.

"The funding formula is only indirectly based on the number of students that you have," said Wallhausen.

"It is more directly based on your expenditures and it is going to be based much more on quality factors and certain incentives in the future," he explained.

Such incentives, he said, tie funding to graduating minority students and those with degrees in certain fields, such as math and science.