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More about the Aldridge transition at UMUC is coming out. The Post reports on the practice of paying “hush money” to employees who sign non-disclosure agreements at termination, presumably so they won’t spill any beans about the apparent decline in academics in those programs. This (again, according to the story) may have cost the state millions of tax dollars.

Brit Kirwan nevertheless declares the Aldridge tenure a “success”. In the present state economy, it isn’t clear that we can afford that much more success.

Critics are emerging to complain that UMUC focused “enrollment and revenue over learning”. Maybe Brit should have a look-see at practices at the other College Park campus, hmmm?

In a puff piece written for (and possibly by) the campus administration, the Diamondback today laid out UM’s case for continuing race-based admissions practices, in light of the Supreme Court’s upcoming consideration of ‘equal opportunity’ in other states.

Under a smokescreen of lofty goals about diversity in the workforce, Director of Undergraduate Admissions Shannon Gundy fails to give any specifics of how race is factored into her office’s decisions about admission, and therein is the rub. The campus cites “26 factors” which contribute to any decision, but in fact, we track almost none of them, and the first shred of evidence has yet to appear to describe how admissions counselors (who review applicants) are directed to use these criteria. Gundy may give lip service to criteria other than race, but in the end, she and her crew all know what to admit when they see it. As a result, objectively unprepared students – who cost this campus dearly before minority students are sent packing without degrees after years of contributing to our diversity reports to Annapolis – displace objectively prepared students who were inconveniently Asian or White.

Asking the race-conscious Admissions office whether an African American applicant is prepared for College Park is like asking your barber if you need a haircut.

If there’s a reason our normally tight-lipped administration is trying to push out on race-based admissions practices, then it could be because the rest of the country may be moving past it. The Supreme Court case coming up is only one sign that maybe America is finally able to join the post-racial age, and even Time Magazine has carried research reports about the unintended, negative consequences of favoring one race over another in decisions. A pity that UM may once again – like with its race restrictions on law school admissions decades ago, and race restrictions on scholarships two decades ago – fight to stay on the wrong side of history.

One piece of legislation currently under consideration in Annapolis would tear yet another hole into Maryland’s tattered Public Information Act by adding another exemption (meaning, another way the state would not have to respond to requests by its people who seek access to documents owned in their name.) The bill would exempt university researchers from having to share their scholarly materials and raw data.

You know. Like scholars who believe in intellectual objectivity and scientific reproducibility do.

The Sun describes the proponents’ spin about why this limitation on distribution of information is needed, at least in their minds. Largely it has to do with public reaction to tremendously controversial academics in other states, where campuses gave a platform for distribution of notions that many others thought were as unsupportable as they were well-sought by extreme advocacy groups. People wanted to examine how those views came to be and test the strength of those conclusions, the advocacy groups didn’t want to have to ‘splain themselves, and hence the controversy over information access erupted.

Maryland’s extreme edge – we suspect the bill sponsor would wear that as a badge of honor – wants to erect defenses so our campuses can similarly serve as platform for advocacy positions that, by law, cannot be tested by other scholars.

Unfortunately, University of Maryland VP for Research, Patrick O’Shea, testified on behalf of our campus in support of this return to the dark ages. Quoting O’Shea from the Sun, “It would allow us to compete and win the trust of cutting-edge staff,” he said. You know. The kind of staff who want to speak controversial things to the public without danger of having to show their work.

The ultimate newspeak is again from the bill’s sponsor:

Rosenberg said that by passing his bill, the legislature could set Maryland apart from such states. “It would send very strong signals that Maryland is a place where we value scientific research and academic inquiry,” he said.

Indeed. We value academic inquiry so much that we want to pass a law to stop people from being able to inquire.

“[C]oach Randy Edsall took the first steps toward putting last season in the past with yesterday’s unveiling of the Terrapins football team’s 24-man recruiting class.”

Splendid! When do the chemistry, psychology, economics, art history, zoology, journalism and one hundred other department chairmen roll out word of their recruiting picks?

Oh wait. Nobody makes recruiting resources available to those stakeholders. And for that matter, no prospective chemists, psychologists, … have yet heard whether they are even accepted for fall 2012, unless of course they play football.

How about it, Randy? What majors are your hand-picked 24 recruits? Do you even know?

The Fall 2012 entering class of athletes at College Park is described in the Sun as having done okay for football, in spite of the team’s 2-10 recent season.

Bully for football.

Unfortunately, scholars interested in having a UM option have yet to be notified of any admission decision – at least from College Park. The good ones have long since heard from competitors. Wonder how well we’ll do keeping the smart kids in this state after having given name-brand schools a month or more head start?

Prospective students are often caught short by UM’s “priority consideration” deadline for application to this campus. November 1 comes awfully early, in fact seems to be the earliest of the “early decision” dates we can find.

Of course, this is not an “early decision” deadline. The fine print says: “Students should apply by this date for best consideration, for merit-based scholarships and invitations to special programs.” There is an extra comma in that sentence. You can apply later – people do and in fact gain admissions right up to nearly the first day of class. But if you want scholarships or programs, November 1 is it.

So what’s been going on in the last twelve weeks since the deadline? Admissibility decisions were made before Thanksgiving. Vetting for Honors program (and similar) opportunities commenced and concluded before Christmas. That’s the obvious activity, but doesn’t explain why we are still a week or two away away from any general decisions being released. Why does a process which started before Thanksgiving take until after Groundhog Day to become public? What else is going on?

While eager but otherwise ordinary applicants watched the clock, applicants from China were notified of offers in early December. By MOU, these students in specific STEM paths (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) have priority and get notice months before Maryland residents.

Through early January, athletes who are to be recruited for the various (remaining) programs here get their offer packages.

Only after China and the athletics program have cherry-picked their applicants from the pool does the Admissions and Honors program know how many slots are available for them to make offers.

When UM says November 1 is the deadline for best consideration, it means for these special programs – not Maryland residents who thought their bright kids might have priority at the flagship campus. Those of the latter group who applied last October will learn the outcome of their application in a couple weeks.

One of President Loh’s earliest moves upon arrival here was reversing course on the Purple Line, a proposed east-west transit priority of politicians eager to put even more tax dollars into motion.

The Purple Line’s impact to campus will be terrible – cutting it in half what is today described as the “campus core”, increasing risk with Metro’s first-ever at-grade crossing in a pedestrian mall, and embedding another “crime conduit” (as some long-timers call them after they appeared in their neighborhoods years ago) right in our midst. Campus leaders at first opposed it (at least in the milquetoast way academics do these things), until Loh inexplicably (except in terms of “politics”) threw UM support behind the Purple Line. Since then, some respected campus figures who had spoken against the Purple Line have been mute, evidence that Main Admin continues to rule top down and with an iron fist.

Loh should have been careful what he signed up for in flipping policy, since today the very first feathered friend of a very large flock came home to roost. The Post reports state planners are holding back details of preliminary planning so as to not trigger stronger opposition from people affected by the Purple Line. Over three hundred homes and businesses will be directly razed to make way for the line (details still said to be changing “daily”.) That doesn’t count impact to what will surely be thousands of properties and businesses that are immediately adjacent to the land which the state will take at gunpoint.

Loh’s message to our neighbors in the surrounding community is effectively “We like you so much we think you should be paved!”

An opinion piece in this morning’s Post presents a thumbnail of a topic which has been discussed quietly on campus, and which will likely get a lot more attention by the time it is settled. It is the fed’s role in promoting harassment claims by means of lowering the bar. With a reduced barrier to not just bringing a claim but concluding guilt, harassment actions are actively invited, and (this is the particularly troubling part) with potentially huge impact on free speech.

College Park has not been at the forefront of debate highlighted in the above-linked piece, but not because of any absence of harassment on campus, rather, because leadership does such an effective job of quashing open expression among faculty and staff, let alone open and informed debate about policy. There is simply less opportunity for an honest contest of ideas to become cast as “harassment” of one employee by another. UM’s system optimizes for breeding of cultural sheep. (There, you didn’t think you’d see a post on harassment here without an illustration of what could rise to a violation, did you?)

There will be more to say about this topic … at least until the very act of discussing policy becomes a potential violation, which, while absurd, is one of the potential outcomes of the fed’s move.

An unfolding story, many years in the making, will reach a key point today as plaintiffs in a desegregation case will get their day in court. Four historically black universities, together with alumni, argue that the state of Maryland has not done enough to desegregate their campuses.

Morgan State University, Coppin State University, Bowie State University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore will argue many points, but among them is the claim that by allowing duplicate programs between their campuses and others in the state, Maryland has run a de facto ‘separate and unequal’ system which kept students away from their programs. A presumption one might make from this is that they would seek injunctive relief so that overlapping programs are merged by relocating the resources to just one or the other campus (presumably theirs.) They have argued that in specific cases in the past (as we have reported). Nevertheless, they have a different goal in this case: cash.

Plaintiffs aren’t asking for policy change that might affect opportunity to excel. They just want cash. Lots of it. Price tag if they get what they ask? $2 billion. Just like the famous Thornton plan channeled a couple billion tax dollars into Maryland high schools as salve some perceived inequity but with no connection to quality or outcomes, the colleges just want payola. Apparently they think equity means getting a big piece of the taxpayer take. So far, nobody has made any connection between a cash payout and some objective outcome like improved standards of excellence or more students competing for a seat in those classrooms.

Many of the MHEC moves in recent years have been nuanced by an awareness of how things might play to a judge – sort of the elephant in the room of which people do not talk in mixed company – and we’ll soon see how those decisions have played out.

The Chronicle has a thoughtful essay by a Michigan faculty member who reports far less than satisfying experiences with use of an on-line component in her classes. It is worth your attention. She correctly observes that the jury is still out on the question of what techniques work for internet-based instruction, but it should give us pause as at UM there is increased pressure to move on-line. The bean counters in particular love it, since it leverages faculty time across a broader assortment of students, i.e. it costs less. The present essay should make us wonder if one gets the same outcome.