A fight between two public universities in Maryland rages on, with state-university leaders now trying to overturn a decision that impeded University of Maryland University College from offering an online program for aspiring community-college administrators to in-state students because it duplicates a program at Morgan State University.
The Maryland Higher Education Commission’s October decision gave the historically black Morgan State, which had objected that the duplication would violate civil-rights legal precedents, two years to build an online arm of its own program. It meant that the University of Maryland’s University College, a leading player in online education, could provide the program to students everywhere but in the institution’s home state.
But the Baltimore Sun reports today that the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents has taken the unusual step of asking the commission to reconsider the vote. Its argument: The precedent could endanger future online programs.
In a letter to the commission, Clifford Kendall, chairman of the Board of Regents, pointed out that the state’s higher-education plan supports online programs to meet the needs of working adults.
“This decision sets a potentially debilitating precedent that will discourage universities from doing the very thing that MHEC’s state plan charges them to do,” he wrote in the letter, which was quoted in The Sun. The ruling, he added, had left Maryland a “subject of bemusement and bewilderment across the country.”
The Sun reports that the Higher Education Commission is not required to respond to the request.
In November, Morgan State officials issued a lengthy response to the controversy, faulting news coverage that portrayed the decision as a victory for their side. The college’s public-relations office pointed out that the state’s education secretary had originally denied the University of Maryland’s University College the authority to offer the program, but “only later was he influenced to rescind the decision and subsequently to approve the UMUC duplication with the restriction for Maryland students.”
“A more accurate heading would have been ‘UMUC wins; Marylanders Lose,’” the college’s letter said. “Maryland taxpayers lose any time an academic program is unnecessarily duplicated between two publicly supported institutions.”
2 Responses to Maryland System Leaders Try to Reverse Ruling That Blocked Online Program
intered - January 13, 2010 at 11:46 am
The incongruities and hypocrisies in this position are self-evident. I wonder, though, if the Commission realizes that what it views as its private sandbox is now a national market. While the Commission attempts to play the role of meta-economist, controlling and erecting barriers to progress in the few bits and pieces of the market within its reach, every other school in the nation is free to determine if that portion of the Maryland market is worth taking away from the Maryland schools. While I am no longer surprised when I read this kind of thing, I am disheartened to see how self-destructively conservative is this thing we call US higher education. This Commission still sees its domain as a guild.—————–Robert W TuckerPresidentInterEd, Inc.www.InterEd.com
arrive2__net - January 14, 2010 at 3:40 am
This looks to me like an administrative matter. Does the state really need to subsidise two nearly identical programs? Should UMUC be covering the program already at another state institution? Maybe it should if it can provide the program better or cheaper, but that decision would seem to me to be within the descretion of the state government. It seems like the UMUC is undercutting another state school when it may be more desirable for UMUC to innovate its own program. Bernard SchusterArrive2.net