Take a close look at MSSU-J's budget plan

Legislative authorization to rename the state-funded college in Joplin, Mo., has implications that go far beyond the differences between a college and a university.

The school now is officially Missouri Southern State University-Joplin, a change school and community officials have been seeking since about the time the school became a four-year institution in 1967.

As a university, MSSU-J will award graduate degrees. The fiscal note on the bill authorizing the name change said there would be no public money spent to change the name. Perhaps. But who's going to pay for the new graduate studies program, which will need a new director of graduate studies, which will mean more work for the vice president of academic affairs, who will need an assistant, who will supervise the additional faculty required to teach courses at the graduate level?

Any legislator naive enough to think creating another graduate degree-granting university won't cost anything needs to take a close look at MSSU-J's budget request next year.

The budget squeeze on state-funded institutions of higher learning in Missouri may be a good indication that the state already has too many colleges and universities. The University of Missouri and Northwest Missouri State University have suggested a merger. Perhaps there are other likely combinations.

And if the name game is so important, why not pass a bill authorizing each state school to pick its own moniker? Springfield, Mo., would finally get its status label as Missouri State University, for example.

Southeast Missouri State University might want to keeps its name, though, since it's the only university between St. Louis and the Arkansas line and between Illinois and Springfield.