More schools, less value

General Motors has plants all over the world, but it only has one CEO. The University System of Maryland, on the other hand, has 12 institutions and 12 presidents.(1)

When a General Motors plant becomes redundant, the CEO shuts it down. When a University of Maryland campus becomes redundant, the Legislature debates whether to ask the Board of Regents to conduct a study.

The redundant campus, in this case, is the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Under a proposal championed by State Senate President Thomas V. “Mike” Miller Jr., the Baltimore campus would be combined with the state’s flagship university, the University of Maryland, College Park. The current proposal is only about merging the two schools under unified leadership (or, to be more precise, studying such a merger), but some forward-thinking Marylanders fear this is a “first step in uprooting the school for full of Baltimore”. “(two)

If it is a first step, it is the first step on a very long road. The fact that the proposal even makes headlines speaks volumes about how states run large institutions.

Consolidation can save a significant amount of money by streamlining administration, recruiting, and fundraising. However, most state university systems allow separate institutions or semi-autonomous campuses to proliferate for reasons that make more political sense than educational or financial ones.

The State University of New York (SUNY) has 64 campuses, including community colleges, each of which has some degree of independence. That doesn’t include the 23 campuses in the five boroughs of Manhattan, which are part of the City University of New York. California has two separate systems, with overlapping geographic presences: the University of California, with 10 campuses, and the California State University, with 23. The community colleges are part of the California Community College System.

Community colleges, which are really a modern extension of high school, must be local. Nor do they usually have an elaborate infrastructure. But the proliferation of four-year institutions, some of which are eventually upgraded to include research programs and graduate studies, has less to do with education than with local ambition, economic development and simple political haggling.

Communities covet the benefits that a large-scale college campus can produce. Hosting a university can bring prestige to a city, create jobs, attract federal funding, and produce a stream of graduates, many of whom choose to stay close to their alma maters, providing a source of entrepreneurship and innovation. Politicians often go to great lengths to protect schools in their localities and fight changes that could lower those schools’ rank in the educational pecking order.

Downgrading the University of Maryland, Baltimore to a branch campus might save the state money, but it would signal to would-be Baltimore residents and businesses that the state’s educational epicenter lies elsewhere and that the glory days of Baltimore fell behind. The city will most likely keep the remains of Edgar Alan Poe, now below the Law School campus, but the law school itself, and the prestige it brings to the community, could go on.

Baltimore representatives will try to prevent that from happening. This usually means making deals with legislators from other parts of the state, who have little interest in the dispute but will be happy to support the Baltimore delegation in exchange for other favors. As a result, state funds and tuition dollars that could go to pay teachers or buy lab equipment will continue to support duplicate administration.

Anyone wondering why corporations are posting healthy profits, even in a weak economy, while state and local governments struggle, need only see the Maryland proposal as a microcosm of how business differs from government. Corporations expand and contract; They evolve as the environment around them changes. Government institutions, on the other hand, tend to ossify, leaving university systems and other programs abandoned to the changing tides. The new campuses that sprang up amid strong demand from the Baby Boom generation are now, in many cases, of little use, but still standing. And they will probably continue sucking up money until state treasuries are depleted and the fiscal crisis makes change inevitable.

The merger study still faces a vote in the Maryland House of Delegates. And then for anything to actually happen, the study would have to recommend the merger and the Legislature would have to follow its recommendation.

But cutting out a small part of the duplicate government is a good idea, even if that’s all.

Sources:

(1) University System of Maryland: USM Institutions

(2) Community Times: UM merger deserves scrutiny