COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Nuclear engineering professors at the University of Missouri have spent the past year wondering why the university decided to shut down their program and instead move its functions elsewhere on campus.

Now they think they have the answer: the lure of international graduate students from China and other countries.

Opponents of the planned closure of the Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute point to a fall semester meeting of graduate faculty at which electrical and computer engineering professor John Gahl touted the benefits of foreign student recruitment.

Gahl works in the College of Engineering, which would take over the functions of the institute from the university's graduate school. The university has stopped accepting new nuclear engineering students while it attempts to resolve the dispute.