Degree from UMUC: is it appropriate not to mention that it's from UC?

Also: Identify yourself as a graduate of the "University of Maryland" without qualification when your degree is from UMUC, and for every job application or license application or background check or security clearance or exacting client... you submit it to, you will always have to wonder when it will catch up with because that hirer or authority verifies credentials, and they'll check with the only institution anybody else calls "University of Maryland" without qualification, find out you are not its graduate, and blackball you for lying on your resume. There is a good chance any given hirer or authority wouldn't do this, it's true, and a few who did could, I suppose, be so careful and forgiving as to check every other school prefixed "University of Maryland."

But the moment that could change your life could rest with just one hirer or authority who would check, with a protocol that wouldn't tolerate the ambiguity. And what's the chance they'd really get back to you and explain what they found and give you an appeal to explain?

 

Good points.....an example in my backyard is Boston University, which offers online and other CE programs through its Metropolitan College which is an embedded part of BU, the same as the School of Medicine and the School of Law.

From what I understand, UMUC has a distinct "campus" and administration offices not far from College Park which underscores the difference.

 

Being a Marylander, I can speak to this one.

I don't know a single person, personally, who has attended UMES or UMBC (that's what they are known by here) who has ever pretended that they attended school at College Park. UMBC is actually an excellent school, in its own right -- but even so, no honest UMBC alum would say they went to "Maryland" or the "University of Maryland" -- because it would be very deceitful.

It's no different than the UW System in Wisconsin. Even though the folks in Wisconsin refer to 'the' University of Wisconsin as "UW-Madison" -- if someone says they went to the University of Wisconsin, an outsider is probably pretty safe in assuming that they are talking about Madison -- and not Stout or Stevens Point or Whitewater. Again, good schools with good programs in their own areas of specialty, but not 'the' University of Wisconsin.

I'll go back to something my mom taught me 40+ years ago...

"If you have to ask...you probably already know the answer, don't you?"

 

The same is true with the University of Massachusetts system....my Master's alma mater, the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, is a great school in and of itself, but was formerly known as the University of Lowell and before that Lowell State College. Likewise, the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth was formerly Southeastern Massachusetts University and the University of Massachusetts-Boston is basically Boston State College expanded, although the two did co-exist for a few years.

If you say you graduated from the University of Massachusetts, it's generally assumed you mean the "flagship" campus in Amherst which was the first and for awhile only campus. In conversation I'll mention I graduated from "UMass-Lowell" or make some other type of distinction so no one is confused as to what campus I graduated from (even though I only physically went to the Lowell campus twice).

 

How about asking this- If you list the school and I got their number from the Yellow Pages and called the office, would they have your records? If not, you are probably wrong.

 

I guess Maryland's system is also different from the University of California system if they do NOT consider the UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND University College to be a true University of Maryland school (in the UC system, each campus IS a full-fledged University of California campus and the campus identifier is more of a geographical marker, since each campus is highly ranked anyway, although UC Berkeley is recognized as the flagship campus...)

 

I do not disagree that it is deceitful not to put on your resume where you received your degree but isn't UMUC actually in a different city then college park any how?

I mean UMass lowell is easily determined if the applicant only label:
University of Massachusetts, Lowell MA,
or
CSU
California State University, Chico CA

Right?

I would assume that if one put any of the University of Maryland campus' down and ensured the correct city it would be truthful, No?

University of Maryland, Adelphi, MD(UMUC)
or
University of Maryland, College Park, MD(UMCP)
or
University of Maryland, Princess Anne, MD(UMES)
or
University of Maryland, Baltimore,MD (UMB/UMBC)

It seems, to me, that this in no less honest then not explicitly stating you obtained your degree online, or is this not a correct comparison?

 

But they are not campuses of the "University of Maryland." They are individual schools that have integral names including University of Maryland,-rest-of-the-name, where only one of these is known as "University of Maryland" alone, the flagship at College Park.

Seeing "University of Maryland, Princess Anne," before I knew the awfully specific detail that UMES was in Princess Anne, I would think oh, University of Maryland (College Park) must have an extension campus of University of Maryland (College Park), in Princess Anne, sharing the same board, president and senior executive officers, and, and this is substantial, the same accreditation. UMES is separate in all of these things.

I really can't think it would be considered honest for a graduate to make up their own idiosyncratic name for a school instead of using its very clearly accepted name, that the made-up name would instead conceal.

 

This is an interesting discussion. I know in Virginia we have a few campuses for some major schools. For example, the University of Virginia is in Charlottesville, but they have "higher learning centers" throughout the state. My wife was looking at getting her EdS at their Richmond center. To be admitted to the program, she actually has to apply to the university in Charlottesville, even though she'd be attending Richmond. The degree would also say University of Virginia, not University of Virginia - Richmond.

We also have a UVA - Wise campus, but I do believe that may technically be a different "school" as you all have described in some of your replies. Now I could totally see how people could get confused about all of this.

One of the teachers I work with attended the same undergrad school I did, albeit about 10 years earlier. By the time I got there it was upgraded from college to university. Our degrees have different institutions on them, but it's actually the same school. So when she fills out applications, she puts the new name on them. Is she technically lying? If they asked for a copy of her diploma, they'd think she might be. But if they asked for copies of transcripts, they'd bear the new name and see she wasn't.

-Matt

 

I think that it's both disingenuous and unethical for people to suggest that they graduated from a university that didn't really award their degree. It's even worse if the intention is to create the impression that the degree is from a stronger, more prestigious or more selective program than it's actually from.

The biggest difficulty in applying that rather uncontroversial moral principle is in individuating universities and university programs.

We are faced with universities offering programs from remote sites and from satellite campuses. That's a common practice. My own inclination is to treat these separately if they have significantly different admissions and graduation requirements, faculty, courses and syllabi. It's even more obvious when the branch campuses have separate accreditation. That consideration already takes care of the UMUC example, I think.

But... what about universities that offer significantly different programs on the same campus? Some schools offer very highly-rated programs along with some easier-entry night programs for reentry students. Stanford offers an on-campus masters in humanities through its extension division that's quite distinct (intentionally so) from its regular graduate programs in the same subjects. Admissions is hoping to attract a different sort of student (a wide variety of people from all walks of Silicon Valley life) and program participants are restricted to their own extension classes and aren't permitted to take classes from the regular Stanford class schedule.

And what about the common British practice in which universities deputize completely separate educational providers with separate locally-recruited faculties to offer the franchising university's degrees? We often see this happening in the Persian Gulf and in Southeast Asia. In India, many universities are largely examining bodies, leaving actual instruction to a whole galaxy of local colleges of uncertain standard. Perhaps home universities do finally award the degrees in these situations, but can graduates truthfully say that they studied with that university's faculty or participated in whatever it was that created its particular academic prestige?

Getting back to the UMUC example, we have the question of state university systems. Some countries outside the US have analogous issues, I think. If you graduated from U. of Paris II, is it ok to say "University of Paris" and to leave off the 'II'? (The French government controls undergraduate curricula so obsessively that it might not make a whole lot of difference which French university one graduates from (as long as it isn't Sorbon), but an Anglophone never knows.

I make a distinction between what I'll call horizontal and vertical university systems.

The University of California is a horizontal university system. Obviously UC Merced, which isn't even accredited yet (it's a WASC candidate) shouldn't be confused with UC Berkeley. But the fact remains that all of the University of California campuses are intended to be selective research-intensive doctoral universities. In many cases questions of which one is best are program-by-program matters. Most of them have research strengths in something. They are all, to some extent at least, peer institutions. So in that respect, the name "University of California" does mean something across the entire system and it does tell listeners something about the nature of the school that awarded a UC degree.

In contrast, Texas has what I'll call a vertical university system. In Texas' case, the state's research-intensive doctoral universities all seem to be flagships of different systems. There's a U. of Texas system, there's a Texas A&M system, and Texas Tech and U. of Houston have their own systems too. The state's masters-level schools are grouped under these headings, some bearing the flagship's name (U. of TX, TX A&M), others retaining 'XYZ State University' names. Compare that to California's horizontal system where the masters-level schools are all grouped together in their own 'California State University' system. So we have Texas examples like the University of Texas at Brownsville, which is located on a community college campus (TX Southernmost College) that handles its first two years of instruction, with the UTB side teaching upper division classes and a few masters degrees. In this case, reading the "U. of Texas" in the school's name to imply high-selectivity and research prowess would probably be a mistake.

Massachusetts seems to be aiming towards horizontality. All of the U. Mass's, Amherst, Lowell, Boston, Dartmouth and the Med. Center, offer doctoral degrees. (Dartmouth only seems to have one, in electrical engineering). But these schools' emphasis does seem to be different from the state colleges which offer few graduate programs outside education. So the words "University of Massachusetts" do tell me something.

I'm not sure what Maryland is up to. (I suspect that they aren't sure either and that their system is growing ad-hoc, in response to political events.) Maryland apparently has one unified university system, some members bearing the "University of Maryland" name and some not. Three of the schools with "U. of MD" in their names offer extensive doctoral programs (College Park, the Baltimore medical campus and Baltimore County). But Eastern Shore and UMUC don't. Several of the schools without "U. of MD" in their names seem to be masters level, but U. of Baltimore and Morgan State break that incipient pattern by offering a few doctoral programs. The doctoral research weight does seem to be on the ones named "U. of Maryland" though, but it would be a mistake to read that into UMUC.

(As you can probably tell, I favor California-style horizontality, where similar schools are grouped with their peers and given similar names that the public understands.)

Ok, bottom line after all these digressions, I definitely agree with everyone else that it would be unethical for a UMUC graduate to leave off the words "university college". But it's a bigger issue with some international twists and turns. Answers aren't always going to be as clear as they were in the UMUC example.

 

I'm a little late to the discussion but thought I'd add my 2 cents worth:

I graduated with an MBA in 2006 from The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD).

Now...UTD is a good school and is well regarded around the world for their MBA program...but it isn't the same program as the Uinversity of Texas' MBA program.

If I were to say that I went to UT, that would be a lie...I did gi to a UT System school....but it would be disingenuous to say that I went to UT. UTD and UT aren't the same.

The same is true for UM and UMUC. Different schools....therefore, a graduate of UMUC should list the complete name of the school.
​

 

Texas A & M - Commerce

A number of valid points have been made regarding honesty and full disclosure. Whenever someone asks where I completed my MBA studies, I proudly answer, "Texas A & M- Commerce". The same for my second graduate degree. The Texas A & M system includes a number of universities, and the relationships are clear. I understand the desire to be associated with the (forgive me) main campus, but have no desire to engage in what might be perceived as fraudulent behavior.

 

I think Randell answered this one very well.

It's Stanford's prerogative to offer programs through their extension division that may not be seen as selective as their regular programs. However, because the school chooses to do so, participants in these programs have just as much right to say "I'm going to Stanford" as any other student in any other program at Stanford, and the graduates of such programs have earned the right to call themselves Stanford Alumni. Just as those who attend and graduate from Harvard University's Extension School have the right to call themselves Harvard students/alumni, regardless of what the stuck-up clowns at the Crimson think.

The difference between Bill's example and the UMUC example is that Stanford chose to have its extension programs under the same "roof" as its other programs, while the University System of Maryland chose to "wall-off" its extension school from its flagship campus at College Park. If prospective students feel that this differentiation would be doing them a disservice, then perhaps they should vote with their feet and choose a program from another school.

What you don't do is go to one school and hold yourself out as having attended another. That's not only fraud, it also serves to belittle the efforts of everyone who worked hard to earn a degree from your true alma mater. You should have more respect for your fellow students.

 

It's dishonest and unethical to mislead other people, especially if the motive is to claim unfair advantage. That's why most of us agree in opposing degree mills. Suggesting that a student has successfully undergone a highly competitive selection process when he or she has not is misleading. My point was that ethical issues similar to those illustrated in the UMUC instance appear in other contexts as well.

I'd prefer to base my ethical analysis on the honesty issue, on our responsibility not to mislead others.

The problem then is individuating schools. There are schools with multiple campuses and/or many remote sites. There are schools that franchise out programs for other schools to teach. There are schools that are essentially just examining bodies for students educated elsewhere. There are schools that operate dramatically different programs on the same campus. And there are multi-campus university systems, even if it isn't always clear what system members share in common.

In practice then, it can get fuzzy where one school leaves off and where another begins. While the UMUC case is pretty straightforward, it isn't always going to be that easy.

My own instinct in these matters is that care needs to be taken to prevent confusion and false inferences. But unfortunately, it's those who would receive the most personal advantage by allowing confusion to exist who find themselves with the primary responsibility for preventing it. That's usually the way it works in life.

 

Ethics and honesty aside, why not simply ask the institution?

Of the 3 masters programs I am considering (all online) I very specifically contacted each school asking exactly what would be written on my degree, and exactly how to list the college on my resume.

Everyone responded. University of Adelaide gave me a choice of 2 titles which would be correct- so in that case I do have a choice. The other two colleges both replied with a point blank answer. (hint: the only ethical and honest choice)

Is it vain to want a college name to "look" a certain way on our resume? I don't think so. We have to be comfortable and proud of our degree- we will use it in our elevator pitch, mention it at parties. Can I hold my head high when I announce that I am going back to school to get my master's from X? These are worthy questions, but questions to ask BEFORE enrolling.

 

Just curious, what's about this? The degree diploma says, " University of Maryland" or "University of Maryland - University College"? You should list whatever in your diploma.

 

Re: confusion -- I think the specific university or governing higher education body has the primary responsibility for preventing the confusion and therefore should take a big chunk of the blame. If the UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND University College is not a University of Maryland school or campus, then the institution should NOT have used and should not have been allowed to use that university's name to begin with. It's so stupid! Why name a university the University of Maryland XXX if it's not a University of Maryland school in the first place?

 

University of Maryland, University College (UMUC) is part of the University of Maryland System. The schools in the UM system can be found at http://www.usmd.edu/institutions/

 

This is trivia, but it goes with the thread and some people might find it interesting.

While most Cal State Universities are identified by the city they're in, Cal State East Bay is in Hayward, CA and until a couple of years ago was named Cal State Hayward. The then-president thought that "East Bay" was a more regional designation and was able to push through the name change, although outside of the San Francisco Bay area, "East Bay" is pretty meangingless.

Go figure the reasoning. About 25 years ago, San Fernando State College was renamed Cal State Northridge. That's exactly the opposite reasoning from the East Bay name change, going from a regional name to an obscure city name.

Cal State Dominguez Hills is located in Carson, CA, a town near South Central Los Angeles. It's obvious why they went for a more romantic name on that one, but again, it causes confusion within the system. The Monterey Bay campus is located in Seaside, CA. The Channel Islands campus is in Camarillo.

There are still a few schools within the Cal State system that retain the original name form (from when all schools in the system were state colleges), such as San Jose State University, Sonoma State, Humboldt State, San Diego State, and San Francisco State. Again, go figure. There are also the polytechnic universities, which are part of the Cal State system.

Cal State is, of course, a separate from the University of California system. Another poster said UC Berkeley is usually considered the UC flagship. I am not sure about that. What about UCLA? My experience is that each campus stands alone. It would never fly on a resume in California to say simply University of California.

Tricia Schodowski
M.S., California State University East Bay, Hayward, CA

 

A branch campus can be considered part of the school. Someone taking an EdD degree from Virginia Tech taking classes in Northern Virginia earns the same degree as someone taking it from the Blacksburg campus.

But state systems are just that: systems. Each college or university in the system is a degree-granting entity in its own right. One should list one's degree accordingly.

Taking a degree from UC Irvine isn't the same as taking one's degree from UC (Berkeley). And taking one's degree from UMUC is most certainly not the same as taking it from the University of Maryland.

What is confusing is the "UC" part of "UMUC." The term "University College" often connotes a branch or division within a university. This can lead some to infer that UMUC is part of the U of M, instead of a separate university within the UM system.

A name change would seem appropriate. Even if one lists it properly on one's resume, there is still ample chance for it to be misinterpreted.