UMS decision: A portal to nowhere?

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The online multimedia resources for students at the University of Maine are a serious problem. Students are expected to utilize MaineStreet, Blackboard, WebCT, FirstClass and their University of Maine System e-mail account in different ways for different professors and classes.

The whole setup is frustrating, disorienting and a huge waste of time and resources. The editorial board thinks the system is right to rank streamlining and simplifying this jumbled mess as one of its top priorities in its New Challenges, New Directions restructuring plan.

On the other hand, we can’t even remotely agree with the system’s decision to spend as much as $8 million over the next five years on something as non-essential as this portal. The system is doing nothing but creating more convenient access to resources that already exist — a luxury the system should not be pretending it can afford.

Would a new portal be useful? Sure. Would it make students’ and faculty’s lives easier? Probably. Is it a good investment for a collection of institutions that has been announcing cuts in all departments and continually expressing its budget woes? Absolutely not.

We understand the cost for this portal — however much it ends up being — is minimal in comparison to the system’s total budget. Millions of dollars in cuts would still have to be made, with or without this new program. But we think the system’s interest in pursuing a project like this shows it has confused its priorities.

Students across the different campuses have been under the impression that public universities in Maine are academic institutions. However, in the past few weeks, the system has been purportably forced to plan sweeping academic eliminations and restructuring at the same time it is looking to purchase a new, multimillion dollar toy.

More convenient access to WebCT will not placate the hundreds of people who protested on the steps of Fogler Library on Wednesday afternoon. We urge system leaders to invest in students’ educations, which is why they came to college in the first place. If students want cool technology, they can use Twitter.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 8th, 2010, 1:14 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.