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Show Uintah High School seniors may find college entrance more difficult this year With high school graduation just around the corner for Uintah High seniors, many are making plans to enter a coilege or university in the fall. Because of costs of an education, the majority ma-jority of Uintah's collegebound students will choose to attend schools in Utah. Unfortunately, Un-fortunately, for the first time ever, some students may find their entry applications applica-tions refused. Utah law requires state institutions of high education to accept Utah residents. However, the Utah State Board of Regents has determined there is no money to add instructors, class sections, or equipment. Without these, it will be impossible to add additional students, thus students will be turned away. The Board of Regents estimates thousands of students will have entrance applications rejected. Three state colleges will not be affected. af-fected. The College of Eastern Utah, Snow College, and Southern Utah State College still have room for additional students. The rest of Utah's institutions will need to maintain present enrollment levels for lack of funds to handle more. Especially hard hit will be Utah's Technical College. Even this past term students were turned away from Utah Technical College in Salt Lake City. Utah is in a unique position among states when it comes to college enrollment. enroll-ment. The trend nationwide is fewer people peo-ple registering in college, although numbers have increased during the past year because of the nationwide recession. reces-sion. When people find themselves out of work, many consider this an excellent time to prepare themselves for a better job. since they now have nothing to lose and so much to gain. Utah enrollment has continually increased. in-creased. During the recent state legislature added 2.7 percent to higher education's tax funded appropriation. University of Utah President David Gardner said the decision by the legislature would do irreparable damage Id higher education in the state of Utah. The Board of Regents agreed on a tuition tui-tion increase to all state schools of 6.5 percent. In an attempt to do everything possible to allow as many people to enroll, some colleges are shifting money irnm non-academic related areas in order lo add class sections. The Board refused to consider a request re-quest to force colleges to give registration registra-tion priority to Utah residents, saying non-residents do not make a large portion por-tion of the enrollment in state colleges, and to close our doors might make other states close doors to Utahns wishing to attend college elseshere. Ways of turning away students will be left up to individual colleges. Some have said they will give first come, first serve basis, and will encourage existing students who are not doing well to leave school. The University of Utah has chosen to give priority to students better prepared to enter college. The moral of this story may be too late for graduating seniors this year, but may be obvious to younger students, the better bet-ter you do in school, the better your chances of having the college opportunity. |