High school students receiving college credit at Colorado State University-Pueblo in Southern Colorado will have fewer opportunities to get ahead due to Provost Carl Wright’s mandate that every Senior-to-Sophomore dual enrollment program instructor have a master’s degree.

Cutting an opportunity that requires STS instructors to attend classes at CSU-Pueblo, submit portfolios and proof of classwork is a mistake, if administrators insist on creating a brighter future for a university already facing low enrollment and a $3.3 million budget crisis.

Wright said in an interview on Rev 89’s T-Wolf Talk that marketing initiatives fell short of university hopes. President Lesley Di Mare also conceded during a meeting with faculty that the no-rise in tuition campaign failed to meet expectations of increasing enrollment.

That being said, it simply doesn’t make sense to cut a program when nearly 4,600 students at CSU-Pueblo are in-state students, and nearly half of those students, 2,308, call Pueblo County home.

Goals for the program include motivating students to attend college and increasing their likeliness of graduating college on time.

And while District 60 has a graduation rate that is below the state’s average of 76.9 percent, District 70 graduates 82.8 percent of its students, which means there is a huge pool of revenue for CSU-Pueblo.

Motivating students to finish high school in Pueblo County and attend college becomes increasingly important to CSU-Pueblo because the easiest place to recruit students is at home. The statistics show it.

Limiting the program limits opportunity in Pueblo County. It also limits the mission of the program.