Maryland Higher

To encourage nurses to pursue advanced degrees, Maryland higher education and nursing officials have agreed on a way to allow graduates of two-year nursing programs to transfer more of their credits to university programs. Under state rules, registered nurses who received their training at community colleges and want to pursue a bachelor's or master's degree in nursing can transfer only 70 credits toward the 120 or more needed for a four-year degree. As a result, many nurses haven't been able to transfer all their non-nursing credits because much of the 70 credit-maximum was taken up by nursing courses.

The state should postpone plans to expand engineering programs at two universities and to add new programs at three historically black colleges because the changes might further segregate Maryland's college system, the state's higher education secretary says.The recommendation by Maryland Higher Education Secretary Shaila R. Aery followed a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that declared Mississippi's college system unconstitutional in part because some programs were duplicated at historically black and white schools.

A senior official in the state comptroller's office has recommended that legislative auditors look into "unusual" accounting practices at the Maryland Higher Education Commission. John D. Kenney, director of the General Accounting Division, also said yesterday that he will ask the commission's chief of accounting to stop spending money out of a "nonbudgeted" state account - where spending authority controls are less stringent. The account has included millions in federal grant money. Generally, nonbudgeted funds in the state treasury are used as temporary holding accounts for money that is not appropriated by the General Assembly.

In addition to urging a merger of University of Maryland at Baltimore and University of Maryland Baltimore County (see above editorial), the Maryland Higher Education Commission's new master plan addresses two other priorities mandated in the 1988 higher education law -- improving the state's "flagship" campus at College Park and enhancing Maryland's historically black colleges and universities. Both recommendations are good ones.The commission wants College Park protected against future budget cuts.

Plans for merging Baltimore's public institutions of higher education have a way of rising, phoenix-like, from the ashes of their predecessors. The idea keeps getting shot down because schools have powerful constituencies that don't want to see their alma mater's identity diluted, and because school administrators have a powerful incentive to protect their turf. It keeps floating back up because the current chaotic situation cries out for a more rational allocation of scarce state resources.

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected arguments made by education agencies in Maryland and other states that they should not be required to return to the federal government millions of dollars of their college loan programs' reserve funds.In Maryland, the ruling applies to $10.8 million in reserves from the Maryland Higher Education Loan Corporation, and officials are worried that it might also apply to additional reserve funds.The high court yesterday rejected the states' appeal of a ruling that a federal law requiring them to return reserve funds to the federal government did not violate property or contractual rights of state agencies that help run the program in Maryland, North Carolina and South Carolina.

There is no more delicate position in Maryland higher education than state secretary. The role requires a true diplomat and visionary. It requires a leader without ego, one who seeks consensus without playing favorites. And it requires someone who doesn't come to the job with vested interests.For all these reasons, Gov. Parris N. Glendening should not select an insider to fill the post of higher education secretary when incumbent Shaila R. Aery leaves in June. In fact, he ought to use Ms. Aery as a standard for selecting a new secretary.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. asked his higher education secretary yesterday to recommend ways to strengthen the MBA program at Morgan State University in the wake of a decision this week to allow Towson University to offer the degree. In a letter, the governor asked Maryland Higher Education Secretary Calvin W. Burnett to review several issues - including funding levels for the Morgan program - and report back to him by Dec. 15. Henry Fawell, a spokesman for Ehrlich, said the governor isn't seeking to overturn a decision to permit Towson to launch a joint MBA program with the University of Baltimore, which already offers the degree.

COLLEGE PARK -- A campus merger pronounced dead by the University of Maryland System Board of Regents is back on the drawing board after nudging from the state secretary of higher education. But the state university system's governing panel yesterday flatly ruled out even talking about a second merger proposed by Secretary Shaila R. Aery.The regents' education policy committee voted unanimously yesterday to allow Chancellor Donald N. Langenberg to investigate the costs and benefits of merging the University of Maryland's professional schools campus in Baltimore with its Baltimore County campus.

There are charges of "cannibalism" and "fratricide."There are confidential plans to undercut colleagues and grab turf.In other words, it's life as usual in Maryland higher education.In the best of times, the Maryland higher education landscape is a complicated battleground, where college presidents joust for attention, prestige and money.Now, with the state budget in a nose dive, the picture has gotten even uglier. There simply isn't enough money to go around. In the last three years, the University of Maryland system has lost $123 million in state funds.