West Virginia University crisis looms as GOP leaders focus on economic development, jobs

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — On the same day that dejected students pleaded with the board of West Virginia’s flagship university not to eliminate its entire foreign languages department and dozens of other programs, Gov. “We’ve had tough times — there will be more tough times — but absolutely we are rising from the ashes,” Justice said Aug. 22, while signing a bill allocating $45 million for another state school, Marshall University, to open a new cybersecurity center 200 miles from West Virginia University. Speaking to faculty this year, WVU President Gordon Gee said higher education has “lost the support and trust of the American public.” “I want to be very blunt: We have been isolated, we have been arrogant, we have told the American public what they should think,” he said, adding that institutions like WVU have to “turn that around almost immediately, otherwise we have a very bleak future.” But critics see a different a set of circumstances, accusing the administration of financial mismanagement, poor strategic planning and lack of transparency in a state with the lowest rate of college graduates and highest rate of population exodus. “What I’m being told with the grad program for math being cut, is that you guys don’t want me here, that you want me to go to another state and get an education elsewhere.” Leaders agree that education is a key tool to attracting young people and improving quality of life in West Virginia, but WVU’s predicament has raised serious questions about what kinds of education add the most “value.” For the GOP officeholders, value is in economic development and promoting innovative programs — like cybersecurity — that can’t be found almost anywhere else. Peter Lake, who directs the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Florida’s Stetson University said that in recent decades, institutions have increasingly taken a more business-focused approach centering on “return on investment.” The concern for a flagship like WVU, Lake said, is whether these cuts eliminate a pathway for liberal arts studies for most students, preserving them only for “elite institutions that fairly wealthy or very fortunate people can attend.” He said the conflict reflects the fundamental question in higher education right now: How do we assess value?