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Show ' Utah Colleges could top 100,000 students by 2000 More than 9,000 high school seniors sent a message Friday that they will be knocking at the doors of Utah colleges and universities next fall, a message that higher education leaders expect to hear more and more over the next decade. The seniors' intentions were expressed in the form of a study released by the State Office of Education. The study, September Septem-ber Intentions of Utah High School Seniors, shows 80 percent of high school seniors polled intend to pursue a higher education, a majority of them at Utah public colleges and universities. "We will do everything we can to ensure efficiency at our colleges and universities so that we can provide a high quality education to every student possible. We will also appeal to the Legislature and the public to increase resources as the enrollment enroll-ment demands increase," said Wm. Rolfe Kerr, Utah Commissioner Commis-sioner of Higher Education. "Beyond that our only answer is to tell students they can't enroll." Utah's nine colleges and universities should be able to accommodate accom-modate most of the students who apply for enrollment next year. Commissioner Kerr said, although Dixie College may be forced to redirect some students to other colleges in the state with lower enrollment demands. Short-term fixes such as cutting cut-ting back some programs and redirecting funds will be necessary neces-sary next year to preserve student access. " Some enrollment caps have already been set in high demand programs, particularly at University of Utah. The next step, if demands are greater than resources, will be caps at some institutions. institu-tions. "This study verifies our warnings that Utah colleges and universities will be flooded with applicants over the next several years," said Commissioner Kerr. "We would like to preserve access and quality at our institutions, but if one has to give it will have to be access." More students are graduating from Utah high schools than - last year, the State Office of Education study shows, and more and more of those students intend to pursue higher education. In addition, Commissioner Kerr said, greater numbers of older adults are returning to school for retraining and additional training. train-ing. The average age of students at Salt Lake Community College Col-lege is 29, he said. These combined trends mean that by the year 2000, enrollments enroll-ments in Utah colleges and universities will rise from 71,000 students to nearly 100,000. That's a gain of 40 percent in 1 3 short years. |