MU officials partner with MACC to offset some tuition costs

The University of Missouri and Moberly Area Community College officials on Monday a student transition partnership to offset the cost of tuition.

The agreement will “ensure students can transition between the two schools seamlessly,” according to a news release.

MACC president Jeffrey Lashley said they have been working on this partnership program for almost two years, and it will now make it easier for students to take classes at both schools concurrently.

“They’ll typically take their full-time load with us the first two years with nine to 12 credit hours,” he said. “Then they would take three to six credit hours (at MU),” he said.

Lashley said the benefit would be that they can experience all the amenities and programs both schools offer and when they’re ready to transfer to the University of Missouri, they’ll be more comfortable.

“We think this will help with retention because they’re already established here,” said Lashley.

Interim Chancellor Hank Foley, who is leaving his position at Mizzou, has worked on the program for the past year and said that the program helps by lessening “transfer shock” and encouraging students to continue on and have higher success rates.

He also said students could take advantage of lower tuition costs for two years as well, especially if they’re using an A+ scholarship which can only be used at a two-year community college.

“It really cuts the cost of that MU degree for them,” he said.

Foley said the point of the partnership with MACC is to encourage student success in higher education but it could have a collateral benefit on MU enrollment, which has been declining.

Foley said he hopes the new chancellor can help change the stigma of declining enrollment.

“We never should have used increasing enrollment year over year as our metric for feeling good about ourselves,” he said. “If anything, I think we have a chance now to say ‘do we really want to just have growth year after year’ or do we want to say ‘this is how big we want to be and not get bigger but try to get better.'”

The enrollment decline has also led to better student/faculty ratios, he said.

Foley served as interim chancellor after the resignation of R. Bowin Loftin in 2015 following protests at Mizzou. He said he came in at a difficult time but “loved” working for the university.

He said Monday he hopes he has left behind a “can-do spirit” and that future leaders can continue making progress on getting things done and not getting “caught up with process and procedure.”

“Academia can be so slow and we’re in a period of time when the general public is just not going to tolerate that anymore,” he said. “They want to see tings done and done more quickly.”

Foley also encouraged the university to endow the honors college and said it was crucial build the endowment for student support.

“I think black and gold will be with me forever, there’s not doubt in my mind about that,” he said.