The University of Missouri-St. Louis on Wednesday announced a hiring freeze in response to an unexpected enrollment drop that campus officials are linking to the fatal police shooting in nearby Ferguson. Chancellor Tom George announced the hiring freeze in a campuswide email that cited a $2 million budget shortfall created by "widespread anxiety about the region in general," and the northern part of St. Louis County in particular. Bob Samples, a university spokesman, said that some new and returning students had told the university that they had decided not to enroll because of the fallout from the Aug. 9 police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown. The university, with an enrollment of about 12,000, expects to have 600 fewer students in the spring semester compared with spring 2014. A projected 4 percent enrollment increase in the fall semester turned out to be just 1 percent. The campus is four miles from where the Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot Mr. Brown two weeks before the start of fall classes.
Read more at The Associated Press: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/us/missouri-university-ties-drop-in-students-to-ferguson.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1