Yeah I agree that's probably wrong. MSU total students are 26k, Evangel 2k, Drury 2k, OTC total is 11k but there's a lot of online and satellite locations. I'd guess more like 35k, but 40k isn't out of reason.

Didn't include other bible collages or the odd for profit ones, I can't imagine there's another 1k hiding in all of them.

That being said, it's a good point if we have roughly 40k students in a population of 160k, that means 25% of our population counted are college students, many of whom are very under employed making part time money skewing the average way down. Probably the same reason Columbia is right there with us.

https://www.springfieldregion.com/data/schools-and-universities/

Students Springfield Metro Area Total 42,416 Missouri State University 23,618 Ozarks Technical Community College 9,926 Drury University 2,462 Evangel University 2,129 Southwest Baptist University – SBU 1,713 Cox College of Nursing & Health Sciences 956 Midwest Technical Institute 466* SBU – Springfield Campus (includes Mercy College of Nursing) 442 Baptist Bible College 279 Bryan University 275* Columbia College 150