A Day in Annapolis...

I just got back from Annapolis a few minutes ago. I attended for three main reasons today:
1. attend the Budget hearing for UMBC in the House of Delegates
2. attend a hearing on SB 15 (http://mlis.state.md.us/2008RS/bills/sb/sb0015f.pdf), SB 40 (http://mlis.state.md.us/2008RS/bills/sb/sb0040f.pdf), and SB 591 (http://mlis.state.md.us/2008RS/bills/sb/sb0591f.pdf)-- all bills addressing in-state tuition for non-legal residents
3. attend a hearing on SB 81 (http://mlis.state.md.us/2008RS/bills/sb/sb0081f.pdf) and SB 657 (http://mlis.state.md.us/2008RS/bills/sb/sb0657f.pdf)- bills addressing the selection and sale of textbooks

Budget Hearing
At the Budget hearing in the House, President Hrabowski did a masterful job representing our institution. Highlighting the research strengths, diversity, rising retention rates, and others, Dr. Hrabowski impressed legislators. He highlighted some of our challenges, including a limited number of bachelor's degrees, our age, and cost-cutting measures over the past decade, he stressed the importance of full-funding. The Department of Legislative services suggested cutting 6.8 million from our budget--Dr. H stressed why it was so important for the legislature to maintain funding. Further questions were raised about our distribution of financial aid, comparing the rates of financial aid for athletes at UMBC to College Park. Our rates for need are reserved about 19% for athletes, while at College Park, the rate is 7%. Dr. Hrabowski responded that much of our "financial need" aid is hidden in the name of merit scholarship via the scholarship programs and university scholarships. He highlighted that this money is more likely to attract students when it is "prestigious." Yet, I think this is something we might want to look more into. Finally, questions were raised regarding the capacity and efficiency of our teacher education program. We have consistently decreased over the past few years and graduate somewhere around 40 teachers a year. Dr. Hrabowski distracted these comments by highlighting the Sherman Scholars program and our work in STEM (Science, techonology, engineering, and math) fields, as well as in high-needs schools. In fact, the highlight students for the presentation were two Sherman Scholars. Yet, what was not highlighted was our extremely low number of teachers and our inability to cosnsitently attract teacher candidates to pursue STEM fields outside of the Sherman program. In all, Dr. Hrabowski was masterful as usual--expect UMBC to fare well in the budget process.

In-state tuition for Illegal Aliens
I was out of the room for most of this hearing, but did have the opportunity to testify on Senate Bill 15. If you recall, SB 15 does not allow legal in-state residents, who currently receive in-state tuition discounts, to actually receive this commodity. Wherein students at UMBC would be significantly impacted, I spoke on behalf of the SGA against the use of the language "citizen" as opposed to "legal resident." I was specific in delineating that the UMBC SGA was not taking a position on the bill otherwise. An amendment ended up being proposed by the sponsor to change the language to allow legal residents to receive in-state tuition.

Many individuals came to speak for this bill. My analysis is that this bill will pass. It passed in 2003, but was vetoed by Governor Ehrlich. With a new Governor, I see this bill passing and being signed.


Textbook Legislation
Okay--so there are two major bills here that were up for consideration. The first, SB 81, requires universities to publish textbook lists once submitted by the professor. It also requires the publication of ISBN numbers to help students identify their textbook at other sources. I testified in support of this bill with slight amendments. First, I testified explaining that textbook selections should not be submitted until the process of ensuring textbook availability is finalized. Sometimes, if a professor selects a book that is unavailable, they are forced to select a different book. This would ensure that students do not purchase the wrong textbook in this case. We also proposed a deadline for submission of textbook selections six weeks before classes begin. Our comments were in agreement with those of the University System of Maryland.

SB 657- This bill is very complex (see links attached). Here are the points we talked on:

• Support requiring textbook publishers to provide information regarding the costs and changes to textbooks (B & C)
• Oppose quantifying textbook material with a percentage and requiring professors to follow rigid guidelines for selecting textbooks (D)
• Support restrictions on bundling (E)
• Support early publication of textbook selections (G)
• Support publishing details pertaining to textbook selections (G)
• Oppose limiting the use of revenues specifically to the use of lowering textbook costs; many of these revenues are used to offset costs across campus and contribute to financial aid for students (H)

I summarized stressing the importance of passing some sort of bill--taking baby steps. Textbooks are very expensive, and while legislators and administrators like to consider textbooks to be a mandatory cost of education, students often do not purchase textbooks. And if students do not have textbooks, they will likely struggle in their courses. The more expensive textbooks become, the more unlikely students will be to buy them.


Feel free to comment on these bills and others.

Until next time,
Josh