WVU: Making Bad Calls
When I first heard about a well-known university making cuts, I had hoped it would be a university that had no meaning to me at all. Unfortunately, that was not the case. When the news was first brought to my attention, I was stunned to hear that it was West Virginia University. As a native West Virginian, I felt two things. First, I was disappointed. For a university that boasts of being the best in the mountain state; however, it depends on who you talk to, hearing the announcement about them deciding to cut programs and staffing positions is not what I wanted to hear. The second, I was unsurprised. My main question is: can I really even be surprised that WVU would do something like this?
First of all, WVU has a reputation as a party school. Just this year, the Richmond Times-Dispatch named WVU in the top three party schools in the nation. This should not be news as it has been making headlines as a top choice for years. I recall graduating from high school with kids who planned to go to WVU. Not to be a representative of the great state of West Virginia, but rather to get away from their parents and the small rural counties in southern West Virginia. People would jokingly ask what they were planning on majoring in when they started attending WVU that upcoming fall. Then, what would usually follow were the jokes that they were going for a PhD in couch burning, a frequent problem in Morgantown. Over the years, I have run into people who went to WVU, and as painful as it is for me, they were the ones who most often talked poorly about and made fun of the people who still lived in West Virginia. This is especially true concerning the southern part of the state that struggles with poverty, such as McDowell County.
Maybe it is just me, but I would have no pride in attending a school that is widely known for being a party school. As a native West Virginian who still visits as often as I can, I feel angered by those that feel that they can freely make fun of West Virginia just because they currently attend or previously attended WVU. It’s like inviting company to your home, and then watching as they trash and destroy it.
However, I will admit that I feel sorry for those students that suddenly face the unknown as their programs and majors of choice are cut, and those professors in those fields are losing their paychecks and are getting ready to line up in the unemployment line.
This decision greatly impacts those students in those programs that are being cut. These are students who purposely chose these majors because of their deep interest and love of the subjects. The board at WVU approved a seven million dollar cut for staff reductions, which is around 132 positions, have cut 12 graduate and doctorate programs, and have approved a tuition increase, something that greatly influences student’s choices of where they attend university. WVU announced that per-semester tuition will rise to $4,824 for undergraduates. Out-of-state undergraduates will pay $13,680 per semester. The majority of the cuts included graduate courses in finance, instructional design and technology, and elementary and secondary education. WVU’s doctorate accounting program was included in the cut as well. These are much needed degrees in today’s economy, especially as there is a teacher shortage across the United States.
Now, going into the fall of 2023, education department faculty positions and the entire world language department are being cut. Administrators have struggled to identify the metrics WVU is using to evaluate programs and terminate faculty. Faculty members will find out if they have lost their jobs by mid-October.
This is not easy news to hear, and I feel that great individuals who have taught or attended WVU would be shocked and disappointed by this news. Denise Giardina, the Appalachian author who wrote Storming Heaven and former professor at WVU, and Don Knotts who graduated with a BA in education from WVU and became a household name from The Andy Griffith Show, just to name a few.
Anyone close to my age whose grandparents and parents came from Appalachia have been told how valuable an education is, and we often hear stories about how proud Appalachian families were when a child was finally able to go to college to further their education. Especially, if the child was the first to ever finish high school in their family. Now, the news of these programs being cut is painful. This is not the same WVU that was so respected a few decades ago. This is not the same WVU that my maternal grandfather attended briefly after World War II. Today, this is just a completely different WVU.
To answer my question from the beginning: No, I am not surprised that WVU would choose to do this, but I am deeply hurt, and I worry about how this will make West Virginia look to others across the nation. Even though I will always have certain opinions about WVU, I will admit that I do have a deep respect for certain programs. Specifically, the sports programs. I will always have a deep respect for the sports programs at WVU, especially a few years ago when Amanda Ross Mazey, wife of West Virginia baseball coach Randy Mazey, responded so well to a hateful comment about our mountain state. I will always want any student athlete from WVU to do well, but I want the same for those non-athletic students. Whether that degree is in teaching or finance, I want everyone who attends WVU to do well because they will represent West Virginia in whatever career path they go down. Now, I worry that it is going to be known as the university that drove wonderful students out of West Virginia.