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Unfortunately, it would appear not — this is more of the very same type of reflexive, purely political response [Martin] O'Malley utilizes when questions such as the spiraling cost of higher education arise. It is always someone else's responsibility, someone else's fault, someone else's problem. We'll talk about it, we'll throw more public funds at the institutions themselves to "freeze" tuition (which in fact it does not; it only subsidizes it). We'll claim we've solved the problem, and speaking of "hope," people probably won't hold us accountable anyway because we talk a better game (which was probably Gov. Jon Corzine's approach to his failed re-election effort in New Jersey).
I suspect people are realizing O'Malley has failed to provide realistic solutions to big problems pretty much across the board.
In September 2006, Olin Adams and David Shannon of Auburn University published a seminal white paper on cost control in higher education. The basic tenets of this widely acclaimed study echo the direction of past Gov. Robert Ehrlich's policy regarding the difference between the cost and price of higher education during the second half of his term in office. Adams and Shannon present [several] administrative cost-management best practices that are gaining ground nationally: establishing more business partners better positioned in the marketplace to deliver non-academic services such as dining services and book sales, streamlining the campus and institution level decision making process to avoid the paralysis of "consensus obsession," limiting the inefficiencies associated with legal and regulatory overregulation, and increasing consortium activity to take advantage of economies of scale offered by contemporary programs such as self insurance.
They further cite instructional cost-management approaches being implemented by some states that, and I quote: "recognize the relationship between cost and price, enabling rising tuition to be addressed internally before tuition increases are further attacked externally." This was a fundamental planning focus during Gov. Robert Ehrlich's first term in office. The tools to accomplish this currently gaining a strong national track record in other states include limiting undersubscribed classes; leveraging technology through programs such as distance learning, which is proving to not offer lower quality educational value; limiting remediation costs, which are bordering on being out of control in Maryland; and requiring research funding be cost justified and based on a broader — but nonetheless rationally established — outcome targeting.
These are all substantive means by which governors across the country — who understand the need for reform in higher education service delivery and cost management — are becoming part of the solution, instead of remaining part of the problem. The University System of Maryland and the state legislature have shown some recent signs of life in this matter; the governor of Maryland has decided not to join with them. He and his administration have stayed stuck on the path of the blame game, and are simply throwing more and more tax dollars at the problem — claiming the issue itself will go away when the economy recovers. It is clearly evident to most national experts, and in fact to other elected officials in Maryland, that this problem will only worsen if that dated approach continues.
Again, I urge the governor to change direction now on the issue of higher education cost management. Your job, sir, is to put Maryland back in the mainstream of the most innovative, problem solving states in our nation — we owe that to our children and grandchildren.
Michael P. McArdle, Bowie
The writer is a past assistant secretary
for administration and senior adviser to the secretary of higher education in Maryland.