http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/11/2005111004n.htm

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Maryland Commission Approves New M.B.A. Program Over Objection of Historically Black University

By PETER SCHMIDT

The Maryland Higher Education Commission voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to let two public colleges jointly offer a new business program that had been strongly opposed by historically black Morgan State University. The panel's decision came despite earlier cautions by a federal civil-rights official that the move could violate a desegregation agreement.

The state commission voted, 10 to 1, to reject Morgan State's appeal of a March decision by State Higher Education Secretary Calvin W. Burnett to let the University of Baltimore and Towson University jointly offer a master's degree in business administration.

The two colleges that proposed the joint program have said there is a demand for it. But Morgan State expressed worries about students being siphoned away from its own M.B.A. program, and argued that the creation of the new program would violate the commission's pledge, under a five-year-old accord with the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights (The Chronicle, December 8, 2000), to prevent public colleges from duplicating the offerings of historically black institutions in ways that might reduce their enrollments of white students.

In a letter last March announcing his decision to let the joint program go forward, Mr. Burnett said, "In light of steady growth in the number of both undergraduate and graduate enrollments in business, there should be no negative impacts" from the program, which he said would give all Marylanders, including black residents, increased access to graduate-level business instruction.

In appealing Mr. Burnett's decision as "flawed and biased," Morgan State had argued that he had failed to hire an independent consultant who could provide him with objective advice. Partly as a result, the university said, the secretary had failed to consider important facts -- including information regarding program demand, the capacity of the affected institutions, and enrollment trends -- that it believes provided reasons to disapprove of the program.

In April, Wendella P. Fox, the director of the Philadelphia regional office of the Office for Civil Rights, wrote in a letter to the commission that "we have serious concerns about whether approval of the program is consistent with Maryland's commitments" under its desegregation agreement.

She said federal officials were worried that the commission had misinterpreted language in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision, in the case United States v. Kirk Fordice, intended to discourage the unnecessary duplication of public-college programs in states that had previously operated segregated higher education systems.

The chairman of the Maryland Higher Education Commission, Kevin M. O'Keefe, said in an interview following the meeting on Wednesday that officials from the federal civil-rights office had attended hearings related to Morgan State's appeal but had never said definitively whether they approved or disapproved of the new joint program.

Federal civil-rights officials familiar with the case were unavailable for comment late Wednesday. The commission's 2000 agreement with the federal office is set to expire next month.

Also on Wednesday, the commission unanimously approved a statement expressing disappointment that the three public colleges involved in the dispute had failed to come up with a collaborative approach to graduate business education, even after the commission required them to come together last summer to try to find common ground. The commission encouraged the three institutions to continue to discuss ways to cooperate with each other in providing graduate business courses.

Copyright © 2005 by The Chronicle of Higher Education