COLLEGE ACCREDITATION MAKES FOR GOOD BUSINESS

Southeast Missouri State University, once a normal school and teachers college, has a reputation as an institution that educates educators. The school is outstanding in that regard and the reputation is deserved ... though not complete. Southeast also has a long-held and still budding stature as a school that trains students for careers in business. We see the move to seek national accreditation for this program as positive and the logical next step to enhancing this good standing. The community, which will also see benefits from this endeavor, should continue to embrace the business program at Southeast.

To understand the impact of these programs at Southeast, it is important to know that 918 students (12 percent of the university population) are declared majors in the business college; that doesn't include students who take lower level business courses as electives or will ultimately declare majors in the college. Significant too is the fact that Southeast not only prepares men and women for careers in business in this part of the state, fulfilling a regional mission, but a degree from this institution carries considerable weight with any number of major corporations in St. Louis. While any university degree sustains with it a measure of personal enrichment, its worth is increased by the doors it opens in the job market upon graduation.

That is where accreditation from the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business comes in. Of about 3,000 business programs in colleges and universities around the nation, just 295 hold accreditation from the association. Southeast is trying to join the ranks, having submitted in December a plan to the association for reaching the high standards. If the rigorous evaluation and improvement process proceeds as designed, the Donald L. Harrison College of Business at Southeast could be accredited by 1996.

This won't occur automatically. (If it were easy, all institutions would be a part and the accreditation's value would be diminished.) But Southeast has a lot to recommend it, including a crack business faculty, a well-honed curriculum and good word-of-mouth (students passing on agreeable impressions to other students, companies liking what they see in graduates, and so on). What the college lacks is a facility that is up to par with the rest of the program. Business courses are held in several campus buildings, squeezed into inadequate space and inefficiently spread out. On the drawing board is a nearly $13 million College of Business building that will provide necessary room and state-of-the-art teaching tools under one roof. This showplace, to be built on the northern part of the campus, awaits funding from the Missouri legislature, the project having been jilted by lawmakers in the past couple of years. The governor has included it in his budget this year, and we hope it hangs in.

It is noteworthy that regional business concerns have contributed $2.4 million toward the completion of this project, an incentive the General Assembly has yet to recognize. It is likewise significant that Gerald McDougall, dean of the Harrison College of Business, was called upon to speak at a Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce event earlier this month. Business leaders locally should be interested in what is going on at the business college, and the university as a whole. And officials at the business college, and the university, should be attuned to the needs and interests of the local business community. The town-and-gown relationship in Cape Girardeau should be a mutually beneficial one, and for the most part it is.

We commend the university and College of Business for taking on the task of seeking national accreditation for its excellent program. And the success of the college in gaining this status should also be seen as a success for Cape Girardeau.