Testimony, February 19, 2004, Office of the President, University of Maryland

How Do We Stack Up? A Comparison With Our Peers

The following pages illustrate the University's impressive pace of advancement over the past five years in indicators that measure quality.

Effectively Competing for the Top Students

Young people who are ambitious, or their parents, who are often even more ambitious for them, seek admission to the top 200 or so universities—those universities that have a reputation, as we do, for academic excellence. Our emphasis over the past decade on high quality undergraduate education and academically talented students has made a Maryland education a very desirable commodity. The students entering Maryland are simply better than ever, and there are more and more applying each year. The applications for Fall 03 were 25,050—up from almost 17,000 in Fall 98, a 47% increase. Figures 5 and 6 show the competitiveness of the admission process and that we are closing the gap with our peers.

Maryland students are fully competitive in their qualifications as comparisons of SAT scores, just one of the quality indicators we consider, show. Maryland's 25th percentile score is higher than the average score of our peers and above the scores of all the peers. The upper 75th percentile score is above the scores of the 75th percentile at both the Universities of Illinois and Michigan.

Programs for Undergraduates

The University has been a national leader in offering enriched curricula to undergraduates with its College Park Scholars Programs, Gemstone, Hinman Undergraduate Entrepreneurs Program, Civicus and more. Our investment here has thrust us ahead of our peers, some of which did not rank high enough in some categories to appear in the list. In U.S. News & World Report's first ranking of "Special Experiences," the University stood out in three important categories, as figure 7 shows.

Student Graduation Rates

The gap between our student success rate and those of our peers has been a major concern that we have addressed vigorously. After initiating several measures to promote student success, we are beginning to see our numbers turn around. Our six-year graduation rate is 70.3%, up from 63% in 1998. We continue to press for ways to improve the success rates of our students, and continued progress is at hand.

Maintaining Our Competitive Strength in Diversity

Diversity is one of our major strengths. It is an area in which we compete very favorably with our peers though population differences have an effect in the numbers enrolling at various universities. Figure 9 shows that Maryland has a large lead in the number of Black undergraduate students it enrolls, appropriate for the demography of the State.

Producing the leaders of tomorrow is a responsibility of a major research university. We continue to rank among the top 10 in numbers of doctorates awarded to African American graduates. According to Black Issues in Higher Education (January 2004), over the period from 1998-2002, UM ranks 6th nationally and 4th among AAU institutions.

Meeting Students' Financial Need

In FY03, 6,494 resident students applied for financial aid. This group had a total gross need of $71,529,175. To meet their need, the University offered a set of federal grants, federal work-study, state grants, federal loans and institutional grants. All resident students with need who meet application deadlines have access to sufficient funds through loans and grants to cover the full cost of education. However, students do not necessarily accept the financial aid offered, especially the loans. After these offers, acceptances and rejections, the remaining need was $16,152,481, resulting in 77.4% of the gross need being met. In general, students would rather work than take out loans if possible.

The University employs more than 5,000 undergraduates. In FY03, they earned $4.6 million working on contracts and grants, $14.6 million on state accounts and $1.6 million on work-study. Resident students who applied for financial aid earned on average more than $1,800 in University employment during FY03.

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Office of the President, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742