The Immoral List

There is something almost comical about enrolling in a university course, completing the work, and then being told that, when you need confirmation that you are actually enrolled, the university suddenly becomes very interested in explaining why you aren’t really a student.

That was my experience with the University of Maryland’s Free Online Certificate in AI and Career Empowerment course — and with Clayton Richey, who responded to my request on behalf of the university.

I enrolled because I wanted to learn. Nothing complicated. No grand expectations. I wasn’t asking for a degree, academic credit, special treatment, or a scholarship.

I simply needed confirmation that I was participating in the course.

So I contacted the university and asked for a proof-of-enrollment letter containing basic information: my name, student ID, course name, university name, enrollment status, and course dates if applicable.

The response from Clayton Richey was remarkably straightforward:

“This course is free and open to the public. It is not connected to any degree program, and no academic credit is conferred upon completion. We do not provide letters for learners in this course.”

And there it was.

The institution had managed to answer my question without actually addressing the obvious issue.

Apparently, learning has categories now

I understand the distinction between a degree program and an open online course.

I understand that a free course isn’t necessarily equivalent to being enrolled in a university degree.

I understand that non-credit education isn’t the same thing as earning academic credit.

None of that was the point.

The point was that I was participating in a course offered by the University of Maryland and needed some form of confirmation that I was doing so.

Apparently, that’s where the bureaucracy draws the line.

You can learn from the university.

You can complete its course.

You can receive its educational content.

You can presumably tell people that you’re taking the course.

But ask the institution to put that participation on paper?

Suddenly, you’re just “a learner.”

Not a student.

Not someone whose participation is worth documenting.

Just a person who clicked the right buttons on a website.

The irony of “Keep learning. Keep leading.”

The response from Clayton Richey ended with:

“Keep learning. Keep leading.”

I couldn’t help but find that amusing.

It’s a wonderful slogan.

But slogans are easy.

The real test of an institution’s attitude toward learners is what happens when someone asks for something inconvenient.

And my request wasn’t even particularly demanding.

I wasn’t asking them to create an academic transcript for a non-credit course. I wasn’t asking them to fabricate a student status that doesn’t exist. I was asking whether there was any reasonable way to confirm my participation.

Instead, I received a categorical refusal.

It raises an uncomfortable question:

If the university is proud enough of a program to put its name on it, why is it so reluctant to acknowledge the people participating in it?

“It’s not a degree” isn’t an answer to everything

One of the stranger aspects of modern education is the obsession with categorization.

Degree student.

Non-degree student.

Certificate student.

Continuing education.

Professional development.

Open learner.

Auditor.

Participant.

The labels multiply while the underlying reality remains remarkably simple:

Someone is trying to learn something.

Of course, administrative distinctions matter. Universities need policies. They need to know who is eligible for credits, transcripts, financial aid, and official academic records.

But bureaucracy becomes ridiculous when the distinction between “student” and “learner” is apparently so important that the institution can’t provide even a basic confirmation of participation.

The irony is that universities spend enormous amounts of time telling society that lifelong learning matters.

Then someone actually engages in lifelong learning outside the traditional degree structure, and suddenly the paperwork becomes impossible.

Education shouldn’t become less real because it is free

There is also something uncomfortable about the implication that because the course is free, open to the public, and non-credit, the learner’s participation somehow doesn’t deserve recognition.

Free education is still education.

Non-credit education is still education.

Professional development is still education.

Open learning is still learning.

Obviously, completing a free online course shouldn’t be treated as equivalent to earning a master’s degree. Nobody is arguing that.

But there is a huge difference between not receiving academic credit and not being worthy of basic documentation.

Those aren’t the same thing.

And then I apparently became “just a number”

In my follow-up, I explained that I take education seriously and have pursued a broad academic background, including graduate-level education and academic recognition.

I wasn’t mentioning this because I thought I deserved special treatment.

I mentioned it because I wanted to make clear that I wasn’t treating the course as some meaningless internet badge. I was genuinely investing my time into learning.

I also expressed my disappointment that learners in these programs could seemingly be treated as little more than numbers.

Perhaps that was too blunt.

But sometimes bluntness is necessary because polite bureaucratic language has a remarkable ability to make ridiculous situations sound perfectly reasonable.

The bigger problem

My issue isn’t really with one employee.

It’s with the mentality behind the system.

Clayton Richey may simply have been following university policy.

That’s precisely why the situation is worth criticizing.

When an institution can create a policy under which it is perfectly acceptable to offer education to someone while refusing to provide the most basic confirmation that they participate in that education, the problem isn’t necessarily the individual answering the email.

The problem is the institution’s priorities.

Universities love talking about access.

They love talking about lifelong learning.

They love talking about empowering people through education.

But access means very little if the people who actually use that access are treated as administrative afterthoughts.

I wasn’t asking for a diploma

I want to be very clear about what happened.

I didn’t ask the University of Maryland to pretend I had earned a degree.

I didn’t ask them to award me academic credit.

I didn’t ask them to change their policies.

I asked for confirmation that I was enrolled in a course.

And the answer from Clayton Richey was essentially:

We don’t provide that.

Fine.

That’s their policy.

But institutions should understand that policies can be technically defensible while still being disappointing, unnecessarily rigid, and completely out of step with the values they publicly promote.

“Keep learning. Keep leading.”

I’ll gladly do both.

But perhaps universities should also remember that the people doing the learning are the reason the institution exists in the first place.

And perhaps Clayton Richey, the University of Maryland, and institutions like it could occasionally remember that behind every “learner” in their system is an actual person who chose to spend their time learning from them.