Editorial: Amid budget cuts and bad publicity, the University of Missouri-Columbia sits at a critical juncture - The Kansas City Star

The University of Missouri’s Columbia campus sits at a critical juncture. Budget cuts, compounded by declining enrollment and bad publicity, have chipped away at the state’s most high-profile public university. In retrospect, spring 2017 could be viewed as the inflection point that led to a precipitous decline at MU. But the state and the school still have an opportunity to change course. The esteemed campus has struggled with a tangle of thorny challenges. MU has been beset with reduced budgets, drops in enrollment, negative national attention stemming from concerns about its racial climate and misguided Missouri legislators who fail to grasp higher education’s importance to the region’s economic stability. That’s a complicated web for MU to navigate. And it’s imperative that higher education has the support of the legislature as university leaders work to stabilize and contend with an array of issues. http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article151138042.html