Funding problems at West Virginia University (WVU) have become major statewide and national news.

While the WVU situation is terrible, it’s not the whole higher education story. As I’ve mentioned before, most states have reduced public higher education funding over the last 20 years, but West Virginia has cut it more than most. And the most severe of those cuts have come in the seven years that Jim Justice has been our governor. Remember that in 2020 Justice, running for re-election, said he had “made education our priority.” That was ludicrous.

All of the colleges and universities in our state face major budget shortfalls, due to inattention (or lack of concern) by the governor and the West Virginia Legislature. But the other institutions, both four-year and two-year, appear to have found ways to deal with their cuts more reasonably than WVU.

At WVU, the funding shortfall has been compounded by decisions made by President E. Gordon Gee. The institution’s total shortfall is estimated at $45 million this year.

When Gee became president of WVU in 2014, the school had an enrollment of about 29,000 students. He announced that he intended for WVU to grow to about 40,000 students in Morgantown, but didn’t explain how he would do so. He also suggested that he wanted WVU to take over many of the smaller four-year universities in the state, including Shepherd University. Speculation began immediately, that those schools would see programs eliminated, providing incentives for the students in those programs to transfer to WVU’s main campus. Cannibalizing smaller schools would have been his means of generating the increased enrollment.

I was and still am convinced that this is a bad idea. The topography and population distribution of our state argue that we should have a larger number of colleges and universities per population than most states. We do need some streamlining in our system, but I fear making everything part of one institution would further restrict the opportunities available to our citizens. We should look for ways to expand opportunities, not restrict them.

This brings us to the specific cuts Gee has proposed at WVU. He wants to eliminate twice as many graduate programs as undergraduate ones.

One major accomplishment during Gee’s tenure at Morgantown was WVU being designated seven years ago as an “R-1” university. This means it’s now a top-level research university, which it had not been before. A similar improvement was made to the school’s graduate programs.

Sadly, Gee’s proposed cuts threaten the newly prestigious designation of WVU’s graduate and research offerings so soon after it was achieved.

When WVU attained that R-1 status, I had hoped we would then strive for a higher level of prestige for the school’s undergraduate programs. Sadly, we did not. Now, Gee wants to eliminate the entire foreign language program. This is patent nonsense. We need for more of our young folks to study foreign languages, not fewer. Our economy becomes more international every day.

I hold Justice and the Legislature responsible for our state’s overall crisis in higher education. Gee is responsible for the intensity of that crisis at WVU.

John Doyle is a 26-year former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. He can be reached at rjohndoyle@comcast.net.