CAN'T WE all just get along?
Apparently not in Maryland higher education. Fights over academic turf aren't unusual in the Free State, and higher-education politics are generally a notch above vicious, but the battle being waged on several fronts in the Baltimore area is the bloodiest in memory.
Towson University wants to launch its first doctoral program in education. The University of Baltimore wants to offer a doctorate in business. The University of Maryland, Baltimore County wants to reinstate electrical engineering, a popular discipline it lost to Morgan State University nearly two decades ago.
Morgan wants to protect all three programs from competition. Backed by the federal Office for Civil Rights, it has managed to put the first two on hold and to have UMBC's plan rejected this month, a week after it was submitted to state higher-education regulators.
What makes these turf wars particularly bloody is that the Maryland Higher Education Commission earlier had ruled that the UB and Towson plans did not duplicate long-standing programs at Morgan and wouldn't harm the historically black university. (Towson had proposed a cooperative program involving Frostburg and Salisbury state universities.)
But the federal civil rights office, which has been monitoring desegregation in Maryland higher education since 1974, sided with Morgan, noting a 1992 Supreme Court decision that led a lower court to rule that a Mississippi college could not offer a program duplicated at a nearby black school. The federal officials urged the Marylanders to consider collaborating, thus promoting diversity without course duplication.
The result: The Maryland Higher Education Commission is left with egg on its face. Morgan is in the position of a poker player dealt all the aces; in effect, it can veto any proposed program judged to duplicate one on the Northeast Baltimore campus. Officials at Towson, UMBC and UB are wounded. Towson officials had to rescind letters sent to 96 prospective doctoral students, and they believe few will enroll in the Morgan "urban leadership" program.
And if the government orders Morgan to collaborate with its neighbor, the word from Morgan isn't encouraging. "We've always said we'll collaborate," says Earl S. Richardson, Morgan president, "but we won't compromise."
