Undergraduates

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge turned down a request yesterday to temporarily halt a midyear tuition increase by the University System of Maryland, but said he will rule on the legality of the increase next month. Judge Stuart R. Berger's decision was in response to a class action lawsuit by seven students protesting a 5 percent increase at most system schools. The students say the increase - up to $557 for some - violated their agreement with their schools by raising, at the last minute, the cost of enrolling for the spring semester.

The nation's colleges and universities may need better ways to show that they are doing a good job of educating students, but giving standardized tests to undergraduates shouldn't be one of them. That's the least plausible part of an otherwise sensible plan to make more information about higher-education institutions available to students, parents and the public. Many critical elements of the college experience simply can't be captured by uniform tests - and efforts to homogenize that experience should be discouraged.

Anyone sending a child to an expensive college these days undoubtedly looks askance at the difference between the high cost of tuition and the amount of financial aid available. Some members of Congress are also skeptical, and they have floated the idea of requiring universities to spend 5 percent of their endowments each year to give students and their families more tuition relief. Given the value of higher education and the tax-exempt status of universities, it's fair to ask them to do all they can to make higher education accessible and affordable to as many students as possible.

If you've been reading about the flowering of African-American cinema, you probably haven't heard of Wendell Harris Jr.'s "Chameleon Street." That's because Harris' movie, which will be screened today and tomorrow at the Charles, isn't a commercial release with a big advertising budget.The film was financed by his family and friends in Detroit, and it's filled with the flaws -- camera work that doesn't flow and awkward jumps in the narrative -- one often finds in low-budget work by a first-time director.

Oregon's state Board of Higher Education is expected to vote this morning to select University of Baltimore Provost Wim Wiewel as the next president of Portland State University, Oregon's largest college, officials said yesterday. Wiewel, 58, chief academic officer at the 5,400-student downtown Baltimore school since 2004, would replace Daniel O. Bernstine, who stepped down last year after about 10 years in the president's office to head the Law School Admission Council. In a statement yesterday afternoon, University of Baltimore President Robert L. Bogomolny thanked Wiewel for his "many contributions" and congratulated him on his appointment.

Shaw in the Barn This may be Theatre Hopkins' final season in the Merrick Barn on the Homewood campus of the Johns Hopkins University, but to launch it, director Suzanne Pratt is going back to the beginning - the beginning of four plays by George Bernard Shaw, that is. Opening tomorrow under the title Shaw: Four Starters, the production includes the first acts of Arms and the Man and Too True To Be Good, as well as the prologue to Androcles and the...

Our policy, here at the Institute of Things That Might Kill You is not to cause panic. If we suspect some new health menace, such as a link between brain cancer and the dance routine to "Achy Breaky Heart," we do not make any announcement without first going through the standard scientific procedure of applying for a federal grant.But there is no time for that now. Not with the reports that have been flooding into the institute concerning a health menace that threatens all Americans who fall into the High-Risk Group, defined as "Americans who are not already dead."

Quality Ph.D.sIn Mike Bowler's Jan. 10 column on black Ph.D. degrees, Frank L. Morris Sr. of Morgan State University laments the large number of Ph.D.s being awarded Asians or students on temporary visas.I would imagine the number of top degrees awarded to Asian-Americans is also high, although that statistic is not shown.The complaint used to be that many of the foreigners receiving degrees here were not going home and taking jobs away from Americans.Now the complaint is that they are taking degrees away from Americans.

The University of Baltimore will offer every freshman who enrolls in the fall of 2007 a one-year scholarship covering all out-of-pocket tuition and fee expenses - a bold move designed to attract students to its first freshman class in three decades. University officials hope that the one-time grant program will help publicize the downtown college's conversion from a school serving only junior and senior undergraduates - as well as graduate students - to one offering a full four-year undergraduate education.

Coppin State University should enroll higher-caliber freshmen, focus more on transfer and returning students, and reorganize its academics and administration, a committee plans to report Wednesday to the University System of Maryland Board of Regents. The recommendations, from a panel convened in December to study Coppin State, are meant to turn around the stressed institution, one of Maryland's four historically black colleges and universities. The school has one of the lowest six-year graduation rates for first-time, full-time students in the country at 15 percent as of fiscal year 2012 and is underenrolled by more than 2,000 students, the committee said.