We’ve heard a lot from students at the University of Maryland. But officials are keeping mum about the porn flick that may or may not be shown on the College Park campus. We need to hear from them.
They run the university. Or at least taxpayers pay them to run the university even if they do not want to take responsibility for what goes on there.
And that is the real issue here. It is not free speech — because free speech is only trotted out when it is convenient for school officials. Remember Justin Park? He was the junior at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who in 2006 posted party invites on Facebook deemed racially offensive to a fraternity “Halloween in the Hood” party. He was suspended for a year.
In a Nov. 6, 2006, letter to Park, Associate Dean of Students Dorothy Sheppard notified Park of a school hearing to determine whether he violated school provisions for “failing to respect the rights of others and to refrain from behavior that impairs the university’s purpose or its reputation in the community.” While it may be a different school, Park’s treatment is instructive of the double standard that exists on many college campuses.
Sexual liberation is in. Offending racial sensibilities is out and will be punished not just by public shaming, but with institutional wrath. Hot button issues will change over time. But the real problem – that universities want taxpayers’ money, but not their opinions – will not change without more transparency in how they use public money.
Expect most schools to fight reform that opens up their books to scrutiny. The reason is clear. Universities around the country are charging a lot more for a lot less. Over the past decade tuition has been rising faster than inflation and family income.
Maryland is the exception of late because the state legislature has frozen tuition for the past three years. But that only means state taxpayers are making up the difference. In-state undergraduate tuition at University of Maryland at College Park is about $8,000, not including fees.
As Ohio University economist Richard Vedder argues in his 2004 book “Going Broke By Degree,” colleges are taking taxpayer dollars and using the vast majority of it to fund athletics, reduce teaching loads and to hire more administrative staff. He finds that only 21 cents on the dollar of additional money schools collect is directed to instruction.
To rectify that situation, Vedder argues in testimony for the Department of Education, “perhaps we should encourage (require?) universities to separate their teaching and research functions.”
He also suggests that schools administer a standardized general knowledge test at entrance and before graduation to measure learning; the federal government should offer incentives for efficient schools, including merit pay; and that more aide be directed toward low-income students instead of being sent to universities. He argues this reform would increase competition for students and the dollars associated with them and maybe rebalance resources back toward undergraduate teaching.
Those reforms would make universities more accountable to how they spend taxpayer dollars. Maryland’s state legislature could start the process for the University System of Maryland by requiring it to set up a searchable online database similar to the Maryland Funding Accountability and Transparency database at http://spending.dbm.maryland.gov/. The Web site lists information on payments to vendors over $25,000. Other counties, including Montgomery and Howard, have similar databases in the works.
One tailored to the university system could include a breakdown of public money spent on instruction, athletics, research, non-instructional staff, and aid for low-income students, among other categories. President Barack Obama championed the federal version of these databases as a senator. This would have a much more lasting impact on school accountability than Baltimore County Republican Sen. Andrew Harris’s budget amendment to restrict funding to Maryland public universities that screen triple-X movies.
What’s clear is that the school officials right now feel immune to criticisms of school policy. College Park officials may be able to evade questions about porn films shown on campus, but legislators have a week left of this session to show them that with public money comes a responsibility to uphold the public trust.
Examiner columnist Marta H. Mossburg is a senior fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute.
