Students the losers in contract dispute

In their enthusiasm to move quickly on establishing a Microsoft certification program last year, Kent State University administrators apparently overlooked the university's contract with its faculty union, which prohibits for-credit courses being taught by subcontracted instructors. As a result, the students who were enrolled in the program have found themselves responsible for costs that tuition reimbursement or student loan programs now won't cover. In responding to the explicit contract KSU has with its faculty, the administration has broken its implicit contract with the students.
While we recognize that a union must go to bat for its membership, the American Association of University Professors that represents the Kent faculty is driving its point home with a jackhammer.
Nontraditional program: After all, Microsoft certification hardly fits into a traditional university curriculum, but KSU Trumbull is a perfectly appropriate site for this expansion of the university's role. The fact that it is the only such Microsoft site within a 70-mile radius has also drawn people to the campus and to the region who might otherwise have little need to come here.
Nor are most of the 200 students who enrolled in the program traditional university students, but rather working men and women hoping to change careers and increase wages. With the revocation of the credit status of the course, they're the ones who are now out-of-pocket the $832 it costs for each class. For students wanting to become systems engineers, for example, the cost for the required six classes is $5,000.
For the university to inform students in December that they would be unable to earn credit for the January classes they had already registered and paid for shows little consideration for the only ones who are really hurt in this labor-management battle.
Tarnished image: We are concerned, too, that the bungling of a program that showed so much promise in a region desperate for high-tech jobs is hardly good for the Mahoning Valley's image. It's difficult to persuade technologically oriented businesses to relocate to the Valley when they see how hard it is to even get one training program off the ground.
Laura Davis, KSU Trumbull's associate provost, has said that the university's educational policies council has a proposal on the table that could rectify the situation. The faculty senate will vote on the proposed changes March 12.
We would urge KSU's administration and faculty to take an ethical stand and enact all necessary steps to restore the program's credit status and to mend the broken relationships with the program's students.