A bill voted "do pass" by the Missouri Senate Education Committee could impact the future of where students can obtain certain graduate-level degrees if it reaches the governor's desk. Senate Bill 11 , sponsored by Republican state Sen. Lincoln Hough of Greene County , would repeal a 2018 law designating the University of Missouri System — which has campuses in Columbia, Kansas City, St. Louis and Rolla — as the state's "only public research university and the exclusive grantor of research doctorates and first-professional degrees." If passed, the repeal will allow other higher education institutions in the state to propose the establishment of various graduate programs such as dentistry, law, medicine, optometry, pharmacy and veterinary medicine. Additionally, degrees in podiatry, chiropractic and osteopathic medicine, and engineering are currently only allowed to be granted through collaboration with UM, which will also be the degree-granting institution, unless declined by the university. If SB 11 passes, it would have little to no immediate impact on Southeast Missouri State University, as it currently has other priorities. However, it could open doors for the university to pursue offering the programs in the future, depending on local needs. SEMO has not endorsed or testified on behalf of the proposed legislature. Still, president Carlos Vargas said he believes it's important to "provide universities across the state the opportunity" to establish restricted programs, as forcing students to a central location can lead to them leaving the state for their education if another university that offers the degree is closer. "Particularly for SEMO, this idea that we should avoid duplicating programs and that SEMO students should go to the other engineering schools, which is either Rolla or Columbia, to get their degrees, sounds good," Vargas said. "But the reality is that we have, across the river an hour from here in Illinois, SIU Carbondale that offers engineering programs. Our students can very well go there, and it's a lot easier than to go from here to Rolla or Columbia. They can go to Evansville, Indiana. It's closer. They can go to Arkansas, across the border south from here, and it's closer. "We are facing the situation where students are more likely to leave the state to get the engineering programs if they are interested in them than to go to Rolla or Columbia. ... We lose students that could potentially be here, so it's a loss for the State of Missouri. Because those students, as we know statistically, the students that leave the state are more likely to not return than to return."
CONTINUE READING
