Two colleges to discuss service in Cape area

Three Rivers Community College and Mineral Area College representatives will meet next week to negotiate the degree to which each school will serve the Cape Girardeau region.

Mineral Area College, based in Park Hills, Mo., has offered courses through the Career and Technology Center in Cape Girardeau since the early 1990s, although the county is not in its voluntary service area. The operation was through an informal agreement, Three Rivers executive vice president Dr. Larry Kimbrow said.

Cape Girardeau County is in Three Rivers' service area, and officials at Three Rivers in Poplar Bluff say they intend to open an education center in the county by fall 2008, pending approval by the Coordinating Board for Higher Education.

Career and Technology director Rich Payne is not sure the two community colleges can coexist effectively. He, along with nine superintendents, sent letters in September to the commissioner of higher education, Dr. Robert Stein, requesting the county be removed from the Three Rivers' service region and placed in Mineral Area's, Payne said.

"Mineral Area College has been the community college that has supported this area and region over time," he said.

The issue was deferred to the Missouri Community College Association, of which both colleges are members. Stein said he is waiting for a letter from the president's and chancellor's council of the MCCA as to its recommendation before gathering more information himself and presenting the issue to the coordinating board.

"The department and board would prefer that the two institutions would come to an agreement and then come to us with a plan on how they would like to work together and how they would meet the needs in Cape County," said Kathy Swan, the chair of the coordinating board.

The board frowns on duplication because community colleges are supported by taxpayers. Each community college has a taxing district, approved by voters.

Counties that do not have their own community college taxing district, like Cape Girardeau, are served by community colleges that set up extension centers and charge out-of-district costs for courses.

Three Rivers does not intend to push Mineral Area out, Kimbrow said.

"Our goal right now is to not stop anything that Mineral Area is already doing," he said.

Based on a needs assessment slated to begin soon, Kimbrow said the college would offer programs such as nursing or law enforcement, not currently available through Mineral Area in Cape Girardeau. Other courses would primarily be for an associate of arts degree.

Dr. Steven Kurtz, the president of Mineral Area College, said his interest is keeping the current arrangement with the Career and Technology Center.

"That is our goal because we have a lot of money invested. Anything outside of that is outside of our authority. We want to protect what we have. Anything beyond that is really Three Rivers," he said.

Lines were drawn in 1993 to determine service areas, or the regions a community college would serve outside of its taxing district.

"The community colleges themselves determined what the service area boundaries would be," Swan said.

Stein stressed that the lines are voluntary and that "there was never an understanding that any institution would be in a situation to be denying or approving that one institution's behavior relative to another."

Leaders of the community colleges say they are not looking for a squabble and think they can work together to meet needs.

"All of us have the same goals of affordability and accessibility," Kurtz said.

lbavolek@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123