LETTERS: PLAN BENEFITS IN-STATE SEMO STUDENTS

To the editor:

The purpose of this letter is twofold. First, I want to thank the editorial board of the Southeast Missourian for its comments in your Jan. 27 issue concerning the new Regional Achievement Award scholarship program, an initiative to encourage more good students from Southern Illinois to attend Southeast Missouri State University.

But I also want to thank Brad Wittenborn for his more recent letter in the Missourian in which the Regional Achievement Award program was criticized on the grounds that providing an incidental-fee incentive for Illinois residents will result in a greater financial burden for Missouri students. That is not the case, but we appreciate Mr. Wittenborn's giving us the opportunity to explain why eliminating the incidental-fee differential for a limited number of academically qualified Southern Illinois students will actually work to the benefit of Missouri students, the university and the economy of our city and state.

We want everyone to understand that serving all residents of Southeast Missouri is and will remain the university's top priority.

In designing the Regional Achievement Award program, the university carefully studied a number of factors, including the need to make maximum use of our existing instructional capacity by filling empty seats in our classrooms, the need to make full use of our residence halls and the proximity of our campus to a number of communities in Southern Illinois. We weighed very carefully the impact this change in a long-standing out-of-state fee policy -- on a very limited basis -- would have on our in-state students. Our conclusion is that the program as designed will not subsidize out-of-state students at the expense of Missouri residents. The basis of this conclusion is as follows:

The Southeast strategic plan, adopted in 1996, calls for an eventual enrollment of 10,300 students at this institution. The reason for this goal is not that we want Southeast's enrollment to be bigger for the mere sake of being bigger. Rather, the goal of 10,300 students was established because with that number of students we can offer Missouri residents in this area the best possible array of academic programs while maintaining a reasonable level of fees and residence-hall charges. The goal was also set at the 10,300 level because our current faculty and staff -- and, with some planned capital additions, our physical plant -- can accommodate that number with maximum efficiency of scale. Increasing the number of students from Southern Illinois who attend Southeast is vital to reaching this strategic goal of the institution and achieving those benefits of scale.

Based on the number of available seats in academic classes each semester, Regional Achievement Award scholarship students, in the limited numbers anticipated by this program, can be accommodated without significant additional instructional costs. For example, if the maximum number of students in a given class is 30 and our current enrollment yields only 25 students per semester in that class, it would be possible to accommodate five additional students without adding to the instructional cost. We are confident that our colleges will be able to realign faculty and future class offerings as necessary to serve these Regional Achievement Award scholarship students with only minimal additional expenses for instruction. Since these students will generate almost $600,000 of additional incidental-fee revenue during the first year with only minimal additional expenses, their presence at Southeast will actually serve to hold down the fees we charge in-state students.

Turning to the other major cost of attending a university -- housing costs -- we have designed the program so that all Regional Achievement Award scholarship students will be obliged to fulfill a residence-hall requirement. This is important, because approximately 2,480 beds will be available in the residence-hall system in fiscal year 2000, but only 1,911 beds were used in the fall of 1998. The residence-hall requirement of this award will increase usage of residence-hall spaces, thus helping to contain or reduce the cost of operating these facilities for our Missouri students by spreading fixed costs across a greater number of individuals.

Finally, while it may have no direct bearing on the points raised by Mr. Wittenborn in his letter, it is important to note that importing students to Missouri from another state has a positive effect on Missouri's economy, both long term and short term. In the long term, we know that students often choose to remain after graduation and become taxpaying citizens in the state where they receive their college education. In today's tight labor market, this reverse brain drain can certainly work to Missouri's advantage, although without further research we would be reluctant to assign a dollar figure to this long-range factor. However, in the short term, we know from the latest economic-impact study that each Southeast student generates an average of $7,525 for the Cape Girardeau economy. Thus, within four year, if their retention is the same as for the student population in general, our new Regional Achievement Award scholarship students will generate $4.8 million annually for the Southeast Missouri economy.

In summary, our analysis of the Regional Achievement Award scholarship plan shows that while this Missouri institution will permit a limited number of Southern Illinois students (up to 250 a year) to enroll at Southeast at a cost which approximates the in-state incidental fee, the incidental fees and residence-hall rent paid by these students will actually help the university keep its costs lower for Missouri residents, and their spending in the area will add substantially to the local economy.

The Regional Achievement Award scholarship program is good for Missouri, Missourians and Southeast Missouri State University, and that's why it has been implemented.

DALE F. NITZSCHKE, President

Southeast Missouri State University

Cape Girardeau