Higher Education

In a move that has caught some Maryland college officials by surprise, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has chosen former Coppin State College President Calvin W. Burnett as his new secretary of higher education. Ehrlich spokesman Shareese DeLeaver said yesterday that the governor would likely make his formal announcement on Burnett next week. As higher- education secretary, Burnett would lead the Maryland Higher Education Commission, an agency with a paid staff of 60 and unpaid board of 12 that is charged with coordinating policy among the state's private and public colleges.

So, what makes the Hunt Valley Antiques Show Preview Party so young and fresh, even in its 37th year? "We do!" said event co-chair Kathleen Jensen with a laugh. She may have been joking, but she may also have been right. She and co-chair Cara Shea Kohler headed up the 60-member committee that put together this annual fundraiser for Family and Children's Services of Central Maryland. With many of the organizers younger than 40 years old, the combo of young and old proved to be the ticket.

The University of Maryland's distance-learning college has been paying a headhunter in Taiwan to sign up doctoral students there under a commission-based contract that critics say is troubling. Officials of the University of Maryland, University College point to their new branch campus in Taipei as evidence that their 90,000- student operation -- recognized as a global leader in online degrees -- is showing entrepreneurial nimbleness at a time of intense competition. But some higher education experts say UMUC's use of a commission-payment arrangement in Taipei raises ethical questions and might undermine students' interests with a profit motive.

Maryland will need to spend billions of dollars on work force training, education and transportation projects to prepare for an influx of more than 15,000 defense-related workers and their families, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown said yesterday. "There's considerable work to be done in Maryland," said Brown, who unveiled the final report of a committee formed by Gov. Martin O'Malley to ready the state for the thousands who will relocate here with their families as part of the Defense Department's extensive restructuring of its domestic military bases.

Maryland's single greatest competitive advantage in today's high-tech, global economy is its well-educated work force. But that is also its great vulnerability: Workers eventually retire, and unless the state replaces each retiring generation with a generation that has an even larger proportion of college graduates and holders of other post-high school certificates, its competitive edge could soon disappear. Will Maryland do what it takes to keep raising the education level of its work force?

It's tough being a young professional in Baltimore. Actually, anywhere, for that matter. That's according to local economist Anirban Basu, who spoke to a group of 20-something professionals on the economics of being young at an event last week sponsored by the Maryland Business Council. The reason? "In today's policymaking environment, young people are treated so poorly," argues Basu, chairman and chief executive of Sage Policy Group Inc., a Baltimore economic and policy consulting firm.

HARTFORD, Conn. -- A group of entrepreneurs with a lofty idea for a graduate school that emphasizes personal growth, not career training, has won a license to start a college from scratch.Connecticut officials have authorized the group to proceed with plans for an unusual institution that will operate in real classrooms and through computer hookups.The Graduate Institute -- offering master's degrees in areas such as "holistic thinking," "conscious evolution" and "experiential health and healing" -- is believed to be the only school of its kind in the nation.

MARYLAND needs a better-funded, more decentralized state university system. The governor and General Assembly should not play politics with the sensible recommendations of a task force on higher education.The task force embraced most of the points The Sun detailed last month in a four-part editorial series. We are especially cheered by the panel's priorities, topped by enhancement of the largest state campus at College Park and the science and technology campuses in downtown Baltimore and Catonsville.

BALDWIN CITY, Kan. -- This town's traffic light, when it had one, was at the intersection of the two main thoroughfares, Eighth and High streets, which are paved with bricks. The ruts of what once was America's thoroughfare, the Santa Fe Trail, are still visible in the tall grass outside of town.But not everyone moving west on the trail moved on. Everyone was looking for a good place to stop, and some knew a good thing when they saw it. Tickle this prairie and up comes grain, so eastern Kansas acquired Kansans.

James D. Fielder Jr., former acting secretary of Maryland's economic development department, has been named vice president for administration and finance at Towson University, the university said yesterday.Fielder, who has a doctorate in higher-education administration, spent several years at Maryland's Department of Business and Economic Development, most of it as deputy to Secretary James T. Brady. He took over as acting chief when Brady resigned last year.Fielder left the department when Gov. Parris N. Glendening declined to name him permanent secretary and instead chose BT Alex.

The University of Maryland University College will not be allowed to offer Maryland students a community college administration degree, state education officials ruled last night, siding with arguments raised by Morgan State University that the online program would duplicate efforts at the historically black college. A majority of the Maryland Higher Education Commission backed an earlier ruling by Secretary of Education James E. Lyons. Lyons had denied UMUC's request on the grounds that its proposed course of doctoral study would unnecessarily duplicate a unique program at Morgan, thus violating civil rights precedents set by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The University of Maryland University College will have to wait until Oct. 14 for a hearing on its appeal to create a doctoral program for community college administrators. UMUC's request was denied administratively Sept. 21 by Secretary of Higher Education James E. Lyons, who said the program would duplicate a similar one at Morgan State and thus violate the historically black university's civil rights. UMUC filed a formal appeal Thursday, and the matter is now before the Maryland Higher Education Commission.

Maryland students continued to post slight gains on the ACT this year, with scores consistently remaining above the national average, according to results released Wednesday for the Class of 2009. "This is a reflection of the quality of the instruction that students are receiving," said state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick, who also noted Maryland's better performance relative to neighboring states on the national standardized test taken by students applying for college. The percentage of "college ready" students rose by one point from last year, to 30 percent - compared with 23 percent nationwide, according to the state ACT report.

State officials are signaling that Gov. Martin O'Malley's hallmark tuition freeze at public universities could end soon as Maryland grapples with a budget crisis that shows few signs of easing. "I think the time has come to look at moderate tuition increases," said state Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp at a Wednesday meeting of the State Board of Public Works, where $281.5 million in midyear cuts to higher education and other agencies were approved. O'Malley, a Democrat who sits on the spending panel, told her that many agree.

Here's the good news: Gov. Martin O'Malley, after seemingly endless rounds of budget cutting, has still managed to find something we won't miss - $5.5 million in Lottery advertising. Here's the bad news: The rest of the $280 million in cuts Mr. O'Malley unveiled Tuesday afternoon aren't so painless, and they're only an appetizer for even worse reductions to come. The governor anticipates bringing about $420 million more in cuts to the Board of Public Works before Labor Day, and those, he hinted strongly, are going to come by reducing the state payroll and aid to local governments.

State working to prepare students in math In response to "A failing grade for Md. Math" (July 12), readers should be informed of what the education community in Maryland is doing to address the issue of mathematics education and, more broadly, to prepare students for college and the workplace. Maryland has been working closely with Achieve, a nonprofit organization in Washington that is helping to lead the development of rigorous common national standards. Working with Achieve and other states, Maryland K-12 and higher education partners have participated in developing new Algebra II and English language-arts standards.

In 1955, Shirley Smith's parents quashed her goal of becoming a teacher. Higher education, they told her, was a waste of her time and their money, the purview of men. Smith obeyed, but only temporarily. More than a half-century later, at age 72, she will receive her degree from Towson University this week after completing course work in women's studies - a field that didn't even exist when her parents discouraged her from pursuing college. A petite, energetic woman with a big laugh, she's not the oldest to receive a degree from the state's second-largest university; but with a lifetime of experience, three children and four grandchildren, she's not your typical collegian, either.

$2.5 million awarded to avert foreclosures Gov. Martin O'Malley has announced more than $2.5 million in federal, state and local awards to be used toward home foreclosure prevention in Maryland. The awards Wednesday include $1.8 million from National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling and $500,000 from the state of Maryland. Federal funds will be distributed among 30 nonprofit housing counseling agencies and two statewide legal service providers, Civil Justice Network and the Pro Bono Resource Center.

Maryland lawmakers are poised to adopt sweeping recommendations this year that eventually could lead to large funding increases for Maryland's public colleges. But critics say that now is not the time for legislators - already struggling to balance a budget swollen by mandatory education spending - to lay the foundation for other costly requirements. A House of Delegates committee will hold hearings today on a bill supported by Gov. Martin O'Malley and the legislature's fiscal leaders that would endorse a roughly $760 million blueprint for improving the quality and affordability of Maryland's colleges.

Wind power threatens to silence songbirds Frank D. Roylance's excellent article "Tracking the songbirds" (Feb. 13) was a fascinating account of how far scientists have come in their ability to trace the thousands of miles of migration by birds wearing tiny "geo-locators" attached to their backs. But the part of his article that should serve as a wake-up call for those rushing to place wind turbines on the unfragmented forests all along the ridges of the Appalachian Mountains is the paragraph pointing out that "scientists have known that destruction and fragmentation of forests in North America are among the factors that have contributed to population declines here."