A debate now raging at the highest levels of academia stands to affect Missouri taxpayers at every level.

Advocates for Missouri State University in Springfield are backing legislation to allow it to offer a wider range of advanced degrees – in such things as engineering, medicine and perhaps law – that current state law leaves to the flagship University of Missouri System.

Such legislation has been introduced in recent sessions without success, but former MSU President Clif Smart made an impassioned case for this year’s twin House and Senate bills in a Springfield Daily Citizen op-ed last week.

Smart’s article acknowledges that a 2005 law that turned Southwest Missouri State into Missouri State University also required high-overhead advanced degrees stay within the purview of the UM System.

But, characterizing that arrangement as “a monopoly of the flagship university,” Smart argues that as MSU grew, “the need to offer professional doctorates to a growing region became more and more obvious …”

Maybe not so obvious.

The UM System has responded with arguments of its own – including that adding new high-cost advanced degree programs will only add to taxes and tuition.

“Doctoral and professional programs are expensive because they require dedicated infrastructure, instruments, faculty and graduate students, among other associated costs,” the system argues in a position paper.

“Adding new programs that duplicate existing programs at the UM System will dramatically increase tuition for Missouri students and add significant costs to Missouri taxpayers. …

“There has never been a doctoral or research program that has been created at public universities without significant state support.”

Moreover, a 2018 law allows other four-year institutions to offer doctoral and professional degrees in partnership with UM System. And, as Smart acknowledges in his article, in 2022 “the Coordinating Board of Higher Education approved a new mission for Missouri State University which included conferring professional doctorates.

“Missouri State now offers professional doctorates in occupational therapy, physical therapy, nursing practice, nurse anesthesia, audiology, pharmacy (with UMKC), psychology and Defense and Strategic Studies. A new doctorate in education program will begin this fall. The University of Missouri System retains a monopoly on Ph.D. programs, engineering programs, and certain, specific professional doctoral programs including medicine, law, veterinary medicine, optometry, pharmacy and dentistry.”

Calling the state’s advanced degree consolidation a monopoly is one way of looking at it. Another way is that the state is reducing duplication among high-cost degrees.

With President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leading the way, interest in cutting government spending is sweeping the nation. The question for Missouri lawmakers is whether a move to expand costly post-graduate degrees would be swimming against that tide.