SEMO ENROLLMENT, COSTS DON'T ADD UP

At the start of the 1984 fall semester, nearly 9,200 students were enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University. A decade later, the number has dropped to 7,673 -- a decrease of 17 percent. In just the past year, enrollment has dropped by more than 400 students.

There are several plausible reasons for the steady decline in enrollment at Southeast, not the least of which is demographics: There is a smaller pool of high school graduates today than 10 years ago.

And yet out of Missouri's four regional universities, Southeast was the only one to see long-term enrollment decline. Central Missouri State, Northwest Missouri State and Southwest Missouri State University all experienced double-digit percentage growth.

If those schools can attract students and grow in enrollment, why can't Southeast hold the line?

Southeast's president, Kala Stroup, gives this reason: Missouri colleges are forced to restrict admissions because of limited state funding. When voters defeated Proposition B in November 1991, Stroup says, Missouri's colleges lost an opportunity for increased funding. As a result, colleges elected to restrict enrollment rather than cut back on the quality of their programs. Southeast moved to a more restrictive enrollment, denying admission to hundreds of students.

But while the university has been restricting enrollment, faculty, staff and administration has grown. In the fall of 1983, there were 839 full-time faculty, staff and administration employees at Southeast. Ten years later, there are 41 fewer faculty members, but an additional 137 non-faculty employees have swelled the ranks of faculty, staff and administration to 935 employees. That computes to one position for every 8.2 students.

Many of these new positions are funded by grants or have been mandated by the state. More than 50 new administrative and nonfaculty positions didn't exist prior to 1983, such as staff for the Show Me Center, University Development, KRCU-FM, the School of University Studies and the Equal Opportunity-Retention Office.

Yet, to the casual observer, the facts remain: Enrollment is down, while the number of university employees and the cost of tuition continue to increase.

Meanwhile, the state's appropriation for the university also has grown, to $31.5 million from $19 million a decade ago, a whopping 66 percent. Even indexed for inflation, the university's state appropriation has grown 15 percent.

And faculty salaries have eluded any downsizing due to the failure of Proposition B. In the past two years, faculty salaries have increased a combined total of 12.7 percent, one of the highest rates of increase among Missouri's public, four-year colleges and universities. Stroup considers this good news. She has made efforts to increase faculty salaries one of her priorities.

But students, who are picking up about 10 percent more of their education costs today than in 1984, have other priorities. Students ought to pick up a greater share of the costs of the benefit of their education, but they are justified in wishing there were more students to share the costs. In 1984, tuition was $775 for 15 credit hours of study. Today, the same student will spend $2,434. It is enough to make anyone think twice about going to college, particularly in Southeast Missouri where 17 to 20 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.

Southeast needs to consider carefully whether it wants to push these students into community colleges, where there are fewer educational options. Instead of serving the needs of students in the region, Southeast appears bent on attracting top students, albeit fewer of them, by restricting enrollment and raising staff salaries.