Doctoral Program Decision
Deferred in Baltimore
BALTIMORE — A decision on new doctoral programs at two Baltimore-area public universities, opposed by Morgan State University on the grounds they would unnecessarily duplicate programs at the predominantly Black school, has been deferred, state education officials said late last month.
The programs will not be approved before the commission "has meaningfully examined whether educationally sound and less segregative alternatives are available to meet a demonstrated educational need," wrote Dr. John J. Oliver, chairman of the Maryland Higher Education Commission.
Oliver made the comments in a letter to the presidents of Towson University and the University of Baltimore — the two schools seeking the new programs — and Morgan State.
Morgan State officials have said approval of the programs would violate the state's equal educational opportunity obligations under state and federal law (see Black Issues, May 25).
The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, which is currently conducting an assessment of the integration of the state's higher education system, has backed Morgan's objections.
Morgan State's president, Dr. Earl S. Richardson, has said the school needs exclusivity in programs if it is to become a more diverse institution. Competition from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Towson University and the University of Baltimore would drain possible non-Black students away from Morgan, he says.
"If we are going to establish parity in these campuses' attractiveness, then we have to make sure these campuses have the opportunity to be unique," Richardson told Black Issues.
He says that Morgan State flourished — and had a nearly 60 percent non-Black student population — in the 1960s when it was the only public liberal arts college here and enrolled more than 6,000 students. Then, as other institutions opened and attained programs duplicative of those at Morgan State, enrollment took a nose dive.
"So now we're 28 years behind," he says, adding that based on a conservative growth rate of 3.5 percent, Morgan State would currently have 16,000 students had other area institutions not been allowed to duplicate programs.
"Those who are proponents of this duplication in Baltimore may be well-intentioned," Richardson says. "But the proponents of separate but equal may also have been well-intentioned."