UNIVERSITY STRIVES FOR ENROLLMENT INCREASES; REGENTS WANT REALISTIC CHALLENGES

Southeast Missouri State University has a way to go to meet enrollment goals, a progress report shows.

The report, delivered to the Board of Regents last Friday, details the university's efforts to implement the goals of the strategic plan.

Those goals include boosting enrollment to 10,300 by the year 2000, a goal that university officials acknowledge is ambitious.

Dr. Robert Parrent, associate vice president for enrollment management, said the university might not meet the enrollment goal by that date.

Enrollment this fall stands at 8,234.

But Parrent said any good strategic plan sets challenging goals.

Don Dickerson, president of the Board of Regents, said the university has to be realistic about its goals.

"I don't know that we could reach all the targets that we set, but it is sure fun to try," he said Friday.

The university wants a student body of 9,348 undergraduates and 960 graduate students by the 2000 fall semester.

The school also wants a freshman class of 1,550 by that date.

In the fall of 1996, there were 1,282 freshmen enrolled or 192 less than the 1,474 that the university had hoped to have enrolled, the progress report shows.

The university fell behind in other targeted areas too, including the number of new minority and international students enrolled at the institution.

Southeast had 7,341 undergraduate students in the fall of 1996 or 557 less than the target set for the school for that semester.

The number of graduate students, on the other hand, exceeded expectations. Southeast had 876 graduate students enrolled in the fall of 1996 or 36 more than the target level set by the school.

Boosting the graduation rate is one of the goals of Southeast's strategic plan.

Currently, only 36.5 percent of undergraduate students graduate from Southeast within six years. University officials want to bring that rate up to 55 percent.

To reach that goal, the university wants to improve the student retention rate.

Of the freshmen who entered Southeast in the fall of 1996, 69.9 percent returned this fall. That is less than the 77 percent target set by the school for this fall, the progress report said.

"You lose a bunch after the freshman year," Dickerson said.

But Dickerson and Parrent said they believe Southeast is making progress in that regard by recruiting better students as judged by college entrance tests.

Increasing enrollment is important, but it is more important to improve graduation rates, Dickerson said.

Parrent said no strategic plan is set in stone. "It is kind of a road map," he said.

Parrent said the university is working to boost enrollment of international, minority, transfer and St. Louis area students as part of the strategic plan.

The goal isn't just to boost overall enrollment. The goal is to secure a proper mix of students, including older, non-traditional students, Parrent said.

Parrent and Dickerson said it is important for the university to continue to track its progress in implementing the plan.

"At least we are on down the road a little bit," Parrent said.