POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. -- Three Rivers Community College has reached an attendance record this semester, with 3,719 students taking 41,903 credit hours.

"I'm proud to say we busted the 3,700 mark this week," Three Rivers president Dr. Devin Stephenson said during the board meeting Wednesday. He added that the goal next fall is to enroll at least 4,000 students.

The college is tracking more than a 5 percent increase over the previous record of 3,534 during fall 2009, and credit-hour production is a 12 percent increase over last year's 37,519, according to information provided to the board.

Besides the main campus in Poplar Bluff, data includes online courses and attendance at the centers in Kennett, Malden, Portageville and Sikeston, Mo., along with the new community college center in Cape Girardeau that had 165 enrolled when classes began Monday.

Jason Hoseney, vice president for student success, pointed out that the modest increase over last year may have been higher but a new registration policy was implemented requiring students to have either financial aid verified or tuition and fees paid before the start of classes last week.

In previous years, 1,000 students registered in mass three days before classes began.

"If it was more loose like we had in past, we may have exceeded 4,000," Hoseney said. "They let students float through the end of October, and that has resulted in some bad data."

The vice president reported that a $67,907 liability is owed to the United States Department of Education to pay back federal funds that were disbursed to 59 students for whom the community college was unable to verify attendance for between 2006 and 2009.

Due to the corrective actions taken, including hiring replacement financial aid director Laura Milligan, along with new support staff, the liability is far less than the $366,000 that Hoseney anticipated, based on a Title IV review conducted last year.

There were a total of nine findings of noncompliance during the review due to inefficient record keeping with the former community college leadership.

"While we didn't do things absolutely correctly, we were still within the law of how we dispersed funds," Hoseney said.

On the plus side, Charlotte Eubank, chief financial officer, announced that Three Rivers is more than $1 million, or 20 percent, "ahead of the curve" than was originally projected this fiscal year in terms of revenue generated from tuition and fees.