Morgan State’s Objection to Joint Towson Univ./U of Baltimore Program: More Than Just a Turf Battle

By Dori Berman

On the surface, it appeared to be just one university trying to protect its turf.

But as the debate over the new joint Towson University/ University of Baltimore MBA program, and Morgan State’s objection to it, gathered steam in the latest legislative session, it became clear the issues went deeper than geography and enrollment competition.

Towson’s program was proposed in 2005 and approved by the Maryland Higher Education Commission despite complaints that it unnecessarily duplicated an MBA program already offered by Morgan State University, a little more than five miles away.

Other institutions in the Baltimore region also objected to the program’s approval, arguing that their offerings already fulfilled the region’s demand for MBA degrees, but Morgan was the only historically black institution to do so. That is especially important because Maryland is legally obligated, under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, to desegregate its higher education system.

Legislation that would have allowed Morgan to appeal the program approval to the courts failed in the legislature’s final days last month, leaving the Towson/UB program, which began accepting students last fall, intact for now.

But questions linger about whether the state is violating its legal responsibilities by allowing the program to continue.

The Fordice case

James E. Lyons Sr., Maryland’s secretary of higher education, was not in Maryland when the UB/Towson program was approved. He does, however, have significant experience on the subject of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, and the integration of higher education systems.

In 1992 Lyons was the president of Bowie State University, an HBCU in Prince George’s County, and had been tapped to lead Jackson State University in Mississippi, also an HBCU, when the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision regarding segregation in state university systems. In what is known as the Fordice decision, the court found that Mississippi had failed to meet its obligation to dismantle its segregated higher education system.

The decision noted that simply adopting race-neutral enrollment policies was not enough to satisfy the state’s obligation to desegregate the system.

“The Fordice case was brought by Jackson State alumni and others who argued that Mississippi still had vestiges of a dual system, that black and white students were still going to separate schools and the schools were separate but equal, and the court agreed,” Lyons recalled during a recent interview. “The point is the state needs to do all that it can. So when you have a situation where you have nearby schools, you don’t want a situation where all the black students go to the black school and all the white students go to the white school, and they’re making those choices because the white school is perceived to be of superior quality.”

State Sen. Joan Carter Conway, D-Baltimore City, sponsored the legislation that would have allowed the case to be appealed to the courts. She argued her intentions were not aimed strictly at the Towson MBA, but rather at the state’s legal obligations.

“It’s all about compliance. Everybody says it’s a Morgan/Towson thing. It’s not about Towson, and it’s not about Morgan,” Conway said. “If you have a historically black institution, and you continue to duplicate its programs, you do very little to promote diversity.”

Maryland’s fulfillment of its desegregation obligations is being evaluated by the U.S. Office for Civil Rights.

The need for MBA programs

Meanwhile, the Towson/UB program is continuing with rolling admissions. Since the joint program began last fall, 247 students have enrolled. That’s in addition to about 250 still matriculating in the UB MBA program that already existed.

Representatives of the program said it benefits the entire region.

“There’s apparently a demand for it if we’ve seen this increase in interest in the joint program. We’ve doubled the number of people who are coming to our open houses,” said Louise Laurence, the associate dean of the Towson University business school.

The region’s demand for MBA program capacity and the future need for MBA graduates in the work force were two of the primary reasons given for the program’s approval in 2005.

From 1996 to 2006, statewide enrollment in MBA programs increased from 4,481 to 6,544.

The duplication issue

Federal law states that new programs at traditionally white colleges duplicating those at HBCUs within a 35-mile radius should be avoided unless there is sound educational justification for the duplication.

In a March 15, 2005, letter to Towson and the University of Baltimore informing those institutions of the approval of the joint program, former higher education secretary Calvin Burnett argued that there was educational justification for the new joint MBA program.

“In light of steady growth in the number of both undergraduate and graduate enrollments in business, there should be no negative impacts on other MBA programs. – However, within an environment of growing enrollments, Towson University and the University of Baltimore will offer access to graduate instruction for more Maryland residents, including African Americans,” Burnett wrote in his letter.

He also noted that if the program was not allowed to proceed, Towson’s business school could have been negatively impacted. Towson’s undergraduate business program is the largest in the Baltimore region, and adding an MBA to its offerings would greatly improve its chances of attracting the best faculty, Burnett argued.

Later that year, in a response to Morgan State’s appeal of the decision to approve the Towson/UB program, Burnett noted that while demand for MBAs was projected to increase, Morgan’s program had experienced declining enrollment and was not sufficiently filling the region’s demand.

Burnett’s decision was appealed to the higher education commission, which encouraged the institutions to negotiate a mutually agreeable solution, recalled Kevin O’Keefe, the commission’s chairman. With no resolution in sight, the commission held a hearing and voted in November 2005 to approve the Towson/UB program.

O’Keefe said the status of Morgan’s program at the time reinforced the educational justification argument in favor of allowing the other schools’ program to go forward.

“I suspect if there were clear indications of what Morgan was going to do in terms of expanding its program, it would have been different. We had persuasive evidence of a program that was in decline and had been for some time, and that there was no apparent plan to change that,” O’Keefe said.

Morgan’s MBA program enrolled 28 in 2004, down from 241 in 1985, Burnett wrote in his letter.

The director of Morgan’s program, William Vroman, took over the reins in 2005, while the commission was dealing with the issue. He said the enrollment numbers were not a good measure of the program’s quality.

“The 28 did not represent the underlying vitality of the program,” Vroman said. “There was the recession of 2000 in combination with the director of the program getting sick. You don’t have to fumble a whole lot in a competitive environment with a recession” to struggle.

Since that time, however, the Morgan program has rebounded and now has 90 students enrolled, and Vroman expects to have between 100 and 125 by the fall.

Unfulfilled obligations?

Meanwhile, the Towson program’s approval raises the question: Did the state fulfill its obligations?

In an April 20, 2005, memorandum to the higher education commission, Assistant Attorney General Pace J. McConkie wrote, “Please be advised that the secretary’s decision of March 15th, while within his discretion to act, was made contrary to the advice and counsel rendered him by the Office of the Attorney General. Specifically, the Secretary was advised that approval of this academic program would leave the state in a vulnerable position, legally, with respect to the law governing the unnecessary duplication of academic programs.”

Seven months after the McConkie memorandum, the higher education commission approved the Towson/UB program. O’Keefe said that as he understood it, the memorandum was the opinion of McConkie alone and not an official opinion from the attorney general.

Lyons did not say he would have made a different decision, but he noted that the state must be careful when considering new programs.

“What I would have looked at, had I been here, was the Fordice case and whether or not we were creating a situation where white students who might otherwise be encouraged to go to Morgan now have an alternative,” Lyons said.

Instead of looking at Morgan’s enrollment numbers and making a decision based on them, Lyons said he would have tried to dig into why Morgan’s enrollment was declining, and what could have been done to remedy the situation.

“In Jackson I met with white students who were driving 35 miles away to the University of Southern Mississippi to take the same program they could have taken in Jackson at home. I asked why, because if you’ve got some problems with Jackson State, I told them I need to know what they are. That’s the kind of approach I would have taken,” Lyons said.

For now, the UB/Towson program will continue accepting students. A civil suit was filed against the state in Baltimore City Circuit Court by the Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Maryland Higher Education, a group of Morgan alumni and other interested individuals formed to advocate for Morgan State and other HBCUs.

The case was moved to federal court and administratively closed earlier this year while the coalition revamps its legal team. The group has until the end of the year to reopen the suit, and the coalition’s president, David Burton, said it has every intention of doing so.

“I think there are other programs as well that have affected all of the HBCUs in Maryland. The coalition is not specific to the Morgan/Towson issue, but the Morgan/Towson issue probably has a higher profile than some of the other noncompliant decisions,” said Burton, a Morgan graduate who now lives near Gaithersburg.

“The broader issue here is competitiveness. The parity or lack of parity that results from [the state's program approval process] leaves some of the HBCUs with a lesser ability to attract students of all races to [their] programs. It’s not a matter of trying to have HBCUs only serve minority populations. It’s just the opposite; they should be serving all populations.”

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