UMBC public policy professor David Salkever delves into the University System of Maryland merger debate in a new Washington Post letter to the editor and Baltimore Sun commentary, published last week.
In the Sun, Salkever argues that merging the University of Maryland, College Park and University of Maryland, Baltimore in an effort to “raise their national rankings based on total research funding” represents flawed logic, given that rankings groups are aware of and have mechanisms to mitigate the effects of such tactics, such as collecting data at the campus rather than institutional level. He writes, “to increase the College Park rankings, in the authoritative ‘Top American Research Universities’ report, we would need to make some (very expensive and disruptive) geographic moves of programs to the College Park campus.”
Responding to the argument that a merger would increase research collaboration across the campuses, Salkever’s Post letter notes: “Before proceeding with an expensive, complicated process to solve [the suggested] collaboration ‘problem,’ officials should first get evidence that a problem exists.” He adds that if the problem does exist, officials should take a careful, evidence-based approach to addressing it.
