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

Thank you for the references, randy. I think this is definitive.

In both cases the conferring body is the Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland. It is NOT "also with reference to", that body, - there is no "also". The superfluous giant "University of Maryland" header to which you refer, has been wedged in there by College Park itself, it is not part of the formal attestation. They even admit that that is so.

This is not rocket science. BOTH diplomas clearly state that the respective degrees are conferred by the SAME body, namely, the Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland. It could not be clearer. We know that because it is written down on the paper given to the graduate. It’s written in fancy script and we called a diploma, but it is a document of proof signed by a controlling authority.

College Park has no right of exclusivity to the title, "University of Maryland". It isn’t even close. The operating text of the diplomas is the declaration by the conferring body that the person named has been awarded the relevant degree. That is the receipt given to the graduate bearing the imprimatur of the conferring body – the board of regents of the university system. University College has as much right to use of the title “University of Maryland” as does College Park. If alumni of College Park have the right to call themselves graduates of UM, then alumni of University College do too.

Now, I know College Park have claimed the name, but the clearly have no right to exclusivity, and graduates of University College are wronged when they are accused of misrepresenting their degree – they clearly are not misrepresenting anything. They ARE graduates of the very same university system as are College Park graduates i.e., UM. College Park have the right to exclusive use of the title UMCP and that’s all.

I’ll beat this to death one last time then exit.

Whose imprimatur is on the diploma? Which authority confers the degree? It is WRITTEN on the certificate (diploma). Think of it as, “ . . we hereby attest and affirm”. The certification is that of the Board of Regents of the University System. All the rest is surrounding fluff. The value of the diploma lies in the affirmation of the award (written in italics) where the board of regents of the university system “hereby confers” – that’s the ball game.


And if this comes across too strident it is the burden of a single digit social IQ and nothing personal.

 

I have to side with Lawrie on this one, at least in principle. I've always had a problem with the University of Maryland system cashing in on the UM name with UMUC, while on the other hand trying to make a clear distinction between UMUC and College Park when it suits them.

When I was in the Army, every base of significant size with an education office offered classes through the "University of Maryland", and back then I and everyone else I knew had positively no idea what the distinction was between UM-College Park and UMUC. Nor was there ever any effort to explain the difference.

It could be argued that UM was preying (and continues to prey) on unsuspecting military people who are unfamiliar with the difference. We all know that a naive E-3 is always going to choose the "University of Maryland" name over something generic like Peru State College, even though Peru is a great and much cheaper option.

If College Park wants exclusive rights to the "University of Maryland" name, then give it to them. Stop playing games with semantics like "University College" and make UMUC "Maryland State University".

I said in my opening that I agreed in principle, only because I always make it clear my own graduate degree is from UMass-Lowell and not the UMass flagship (and formerly only) campus of UMass-Amherst. I suppose I could say I'm a graduate of UMass and leave it at that, but I believe in full disclosure, at least if it's known.

 

Bruce: "I said in my opening that I agreed in principle, only because I always make it clear my own graduate degree is from UMass-Lowell and not the UMass flagship (and formerly only) campus of UMass-Amherst. I suppose I could say I'm a graduate of UMass and leave it at that, but I believe in full disclosure, at least if it's known."

Rich: I don't think it would be appropriate to omit the Lowell reference.

I have to disagree with the notion that the degrees being conferred by the board of regents is somehow a pass on disclosing the true source of one's degree. If we're talking about colleges of universities, branches of the same university, or different delivery methodologies (like DL), fine. The degrees are all coming from the same place: the university. But universities within a state system are separate from each other. In California, there is a huge difference between graduating from UC Berkeley and UC Davis and UCLA. A resume from a Davis grad that omits the "Davis" part of "UC" is lying. The same applies to UM vs. UMUC.

 

Sounds definitive to me.

 

I agree with Rich on that one. The issue here with UMUC is students graduating from a less prestigious school, then trying to make other people think that they graduated from a similarly named but more prestigious school. That's prima facie unethical.

That's true of all the state colleges and universities in Maryland. They are all parts of the University System of Maryland. If somebody simply wants to say that they graduated from a state university in Maryland, then what you say is true. But this whole discussion is about making distinctions among those universities, about students graduating from one of them and then suggesting that they attended a different one.

 

That is false, if you omit Davis, you've just omitted the name of the college, but you did not lie since you are a UC graduate. (A different system is CSU)

 

It is about what the university says, nobody asks in a resume about the teaching methods of a particular institution.

Obviously in an interview, if the employer asks, we should answer truthfully.

 

If your purposeful omission leaves a false and material impression, it is a lie. One graduates from a university, not a "system." UC Davis and UCLA, for example, are entirely different institutions within the same system.

How hard is this? If you mislead someone purposely, you're lying. Sheesh!

 

You are not misleading anyone, if the diploma says "University of California" you are a graduate from such place. There is not false impression here, since you are not mentioning any particular campus.

It will be a lie if you said you've graduated from UC San Francisco when you've actually graduated from UC Santa Barbara for example.

How hard is this Sheesh!

 

It's not hard if one's stance is "Disclose all material aspects". It's very hard if one's intent is to not disclose certain things.

Lawrie's post coupled with the state of Maryland's own style sheet pretty much makes UMUC a closed issue.

In your example above, I think someone stating 'University of California' would actually be doing themselves a disservice because there are so many campuses. Trust me, it wouldn't fly to people who know enough to care.

My opinion for the best practice: disclose everything.

If your degree was earned via distance learning, state it. Via competency or exams, state it. Hell, I'm not even sure it doesn't make sense to disclose night school.

Some may look over your resume. Here's the irony. Most resumes are overlooked any way. Far better to be honest than to be misleading. You may be seen in a more positive light. Who is to say that the recruiter isn't doing the same thing you did (earning a degree via distance).

 

I think that the University of California example is different from the University System of Maryland example for at least two reasons.

First of all, the words 'University of California' don't really suggest any single UC campus. Back before World War II people would have understood it to mean Berkeley, but I don't think that's true today. (Berkeley still styles itself "Cal" in sports.) In Maryland by contrast, it seems that the words 'University of Maryland' are still widely understood to mean the College Park campus.

And second, all of the UC campuses are peer institutions, meaning that they all are research-intensive doctoral universities with fairly selective admissions. I think that's what the words 'University of California' communicate to the public today. Even if they don't tell us which UC somebody attended, they do tell us what kind of university it was. In Maryland, by contrast, UMUC and College Park seem to be rather different kinds of institution. The 'UM' in the name doesn't tell us as much.

 

The thing is, many graduates don't know the difference so how can it be unethical? Someone in my Army unit earned their degree from UMUC, but all he knows is that he graduated from the "University of Maryland".

If there's anything unethical going on, it's the University of Maryland system purposely blurring the lines in the name of profit.

Oh, excuse me......non-profit.

 

Bruce. I find that I agree with about 98.9% of your posts.

I agree with your Army guy example, by the way. If he didn't know, he's not really cheating. Also, anyone earning a degree while serving the country has made it obvious that he or she did so through distance learning.

Not that it matters but I wonder how much attention a resume gets with University of Maryland outside of the mid-Atlantic area? I know many like to think that the reputation of a state school is known by savvy hiring managers nation-wide but my guess is that by the time you get to West VA, South Carolina or New York, the perceived strength of the UM-CP brand has rapidly diminished.

 

Yeah, that's a good point.

So let me rephrase myself: When somebody knowingly and intentionally attempts to mislead other people about which school he or she graduated from, that's unethical.

It sounds like a classic "bait-and-switch".

 

And there is this, I was reading the UMUC website and found this sentence about a certain course listing:

So, if UMUC has a site in College Park as well, I guess the lines could be completely blurred for a graduate that took all their courses at that facility and it looks like they are offered on UM's Campus
http://www.umuc.edu/locate/umd.shtml

Source: http://www.umuc.edu/departments/cite/cmsc/cmsc_announcements.shtml

 

Nonsense. In that case, many graduates would have to "correctly" describe their degree and school in Latin. Many older colleges and universities in the Northeast still issue diplomas in Latin, just as they did in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

For example, Williams College (est. 1793) is one of the country's most respected liberal arts colleges. Their diplomas bear the name of "Collegi Guilielmensis", based on the latinized form of the personal name "William". For proof, check out this site and click on the "diploma frame" link.

The English form "Williams" appears nowhere on the diploma. But no one thinks Williams grads are being misleading when they advertise their "Williams" degrees.

 

I think you're splitting hairs. One can advocate to use the diploma as the final judge and allow for translations.

The thing is that once you translate what they've written, it says Williams College. If the translation were 'Henry's Gun and Locksmith College', you may have a better point.

 

I agree. I don't think using the UC System is a good example here, however, because (1) UC Berkeley doesn't identify itself as "UC" or "University of California" - it calls itself "Berkeley" or "Cal-Berkeley," or in its sports teams, "Cal," and (2) the term UC" or "University of California" is used generically on ALL campuses of the UC System (when I worked briefly for UCOP some years back, all the UC President's letters to students on each campus (and most other inter-campus communications) was always addressed "Dear UC student," not "Dear UC Santa Barbara student," etc.).

So it's perfectly all right for a UC Irvine graduate to simply call himself a "UC graduate" since the term is not associated with Berkeley especially within the UC community (although those born prior to the birth of the other UC campuses might think so). However, as has been mentioned above, one would be hard-pressed to find any non-Berkeley graduate NOT listing his specific campus because graduates of all UC campuses (except for the very young UC Merced, which probably doesn't have graduates yet), which are all highly ranked to begin with, are notoriously fiercely proud of their respective campuses.

Based on what I've seen, non-Berkeley campuses don't have the same "jealousy" issues that all other state university systems in the US (with usually only the flagship campus having some prestige) suffer from, so the UC would be the exception. I think for dishonest people, it's more likely for a Cal State LA graduate to pass himself off as a UCLA graduate than for a UCLA graduate to pass himself off as a Berkeley graduate.

 

The post that I responded to asked: "What precisely does the degree diploma state?" If the "precise wording" is to be the final arbiter, then no -- you cannot allow for translations.

Obviously that would be silly. But the point is that you can't always rely on the precise wording of a degree diploma, and that there will inevitably be some "ifs", “ands” or “buts”.

Furthermore, Latin translations can be imprecise. For example, some schools use the Latin phrase "Baccalaureus in Artibus", while others use "Artium Baccalaureus". In the first case, the degree name may be abbreviated as B.A., while in the second case, the degree name is correctly abbreviated as A.B.

Many people with an "A.B." degree prefer to describe it as a "B.A.", because this form is more familiar to most English speakers; the "A.B." can be mistaken for an associate's degree. This is technically incorrect, and it does not reflect the "precise wording" of their diplomas, but few would object.

 

You are totally right!!, in my discussion about the UC system, not even once thought of UC Berkeley as something special.

My UCLA alumni friends would probably correct anyone who make the mistake of taking them as having graduated from the rival campus up north.