Missouri Senate bill could reshape higher education landscape by expanding graduate degree options

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."

Vargas recalled that upon his arrival in July 2015, SEMO had already submitted a proposal to the Coordinating Board for Higher Education (CBHE) to establish undergraduate degrees in industrial and systems engineering. Vargas said the proposal "created quite an uproar" from UM representatives.

"They didn't necessarily focus on SEMO," Vargas said. "But it's because we submitted the proposal, and that they were the School of Engineering, they were the only ones that had that and giving us the opportunity to do that would hurt or damage their ability to maybe recruit students."

Vargas said he was surprised at UM's response because the engineering programs SEMO planned to implement were not graduate-level programs. UM representatives expressed concern that if SEMO was allowed to offer an undergraduate degree in engineering, the next step would be to establish a School of Engineering, which Vargas said was false.

"Some of the concerns had to do with whether we had the ability and the faculty to support an engineering program. Never, ever did I mention that we wanted to establish a School of Engineering," Vargas said. "That was something that the representative at the time from the University of Missouri said, 'If you approve this degree, then the next step is they're going to want to establish a School of Engineering.' That's not hearsay. That's something I heard personally from a representative from the University of Missouri.

"At the time, we were not interested in establishing a School of Engineering. At this time, we don't have plans to establish a School of Engineering. What we do have plans for is to respond to the needs of the region. If the region's needs happen to be that there is a need for a specific program in engineering, then we will entertain that idea."

UM eventually agreed to allow SEMO to establish the degree, which was then approved by the CBHE. Shortly after SEMO was granted its engineering degree programs — which are now accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) — Vargas recalled that another university had proposed and received approval for another engineering degree. Vargas said he believes the two instances helped drive UM to push for legislation granting exclusive rights to those graduate programs, which it was given in 2018.

"In some ways, and I may not be totally accurate here, but in some ways, that was part of the impetus, I think, to establish in writing a limitation of what degrees other institutions could offer in Missouri," he said.