University of Missouri’s Fall Enrollment Drops 6.2 Percent

(Columbia, MO) — The University of Missouri says fall enrollment at its Columbia campus drops six-point-two percent to its lowest level in six years. The university announced Thursday its student body totals 33-thousand-266. That’s down nearly 22-hundred from the fall of 2015. A spokesman for that campus attributes that campus’ decline to its months of racial unrest, a drop-off in the region’s high school graduates and more intense competition for recruits in St. Louis and Chicago. The number of black students at the Columbia campus fell by 242, to 23-hundred-two. University officials had anticipated the enrollment decline but say it’s not as sharp as initially estimated when fall classes began in August.