Few University System of Maryland administrators had nice things to say about a state board’s recent decision to block UMUC’s proposed higher education administration graduate program. The Maryland Higher Education Commission ruled that the major was a duplicate of a similar program at Morgan State University, thus violating civil rights precedents the U.S. Supreme Court set to integrate historically black colleges and universities.
According to a story in The Sun, System Chancellor Brit Kirwan said he was “very, very disappointed” in the ruling. UMUC President Susan Aldridge said, “this decision prevents many taxpayers in Maryland from earning an important degree from a state university.”
But neither of their comments matched the consternation former system chancellor Donald Langenberg expressed in a letter to The Sun today. Langenberg called the decision “insane!” and then went on to compare it to Soviet rule:
“In the Soviet Union citizens who accessed electronic communication from outside the country were sometimes shipped off to the Gulag in Siberia. What might happen to a Marylander who accessed UMUC’s program through a computer outside Maryland, in D.C. for example?”