WVU cuts classes, not overhead

When the public votes down a school tax levy, the protocol is for the school superintendent to threaten to eliminate sports and shutter schools. Then the school boards hold levy elections until the public finally passes one. Then the school board and its superintendent go on their merry way and back to ignoring the public.

Where do you think Mel Brooks came up with the idea of Sheriff Bart holding himself hostage in Blazing Saddles?

The Sheriff Bart model applies to higher education, which faces cutbacks as fewer young Americans are enrolling in college because people with degrees have flooded the job market.

E. Gordon Gee, president of West Virginia University, is following the Sheriff Bart playbook by stripping away $45 million worth of programs — including the entire world languages program — as he overspent the budget and must trim just under 4% of the school’s $1.2 billion budget.

A 4% cut should be easy-peasy. Businesses do it all the time. But college administrators literally live in ivy-covered towers. They expect a bailout.

The reaction to cutting programs instead of fat is as one may expect. Fools fell for it. The local paper blamed Republicans. It said, “The West Virginia Legislature has continually slashed funding for its public colleges and universities. Specifically, the state has cut funding for WVU by 36% over the past 10 years. Really, though, the issue goes back even further.”

And yet despite a Republican legislature, WVU’s budget grew by 26% in those 10 years. It rose from $951 million in 2013-2014 to $1.2 billion in 2023-2024. Enrollment shrank, which pushed spending per pupil through the roof.

E. Gordon Gee, the elfin president of WVU, is to blame for this mess as he was overly optimistic about the college’s growth. He believes in magic.

The Wall Street Journal reported, “Gee said in 2014 that the university, which at the time enrolled about 33,000 full- and part-time students across its three campuses and online, should grow to 40,000. That would require new investments.

“The students didn’t come—enrollment fell to about 27,500 last fall—but the spending continued.”

The failure is his and his alone. He budgeted for more students than the state can provide. And by state, I mean New Jersey because so many kids from the Garden State attend WVU.

So the school is cutting classes — not administrators. The bureaucracy of any organization is the first hired, last fired because the people who run the organization see the bureaucrats every day. They are nice and friendly. The people who actually do the work are less in touch with corporate management.

In Surf City, there are two girls for every boy.

At WVU, there are four administrators for every faculty member.

Gee is protecting the bureaucracy. Instead of letting administrators go, he is cutting faculty.

Forbes reported, “As students and faculty prepared for the start of the new academic year this month, the president of West Virginia University, Gordon Gee, made a startling announcement: he’s eliminating 169 faculty jobs, about 16% of the full-time professors, and dropping 32 undergraduate and graduate degree programs, including all of its foreign language programs.”

A 4% budget cut should not shutter 32 programs. That non-thundering herd of 7,500 administrators could be culled to cover the $45 million shortfall. If WVU were run by someone concerned about its future, those cuts would be made.

But WVU cut the meat instead of the fat because the university wants the public to pay for Gee’s mistakes. I have met him. He is amiable. He wears a bowtie well. He is a great fund-raiser but he has all the fiscal discipline of a child in a candy store.

The Wall Street Journal gave a good example of Gee’s mismanagement.

The paper said, “The school added about 900 beds on its Morgantown campus since 2012. A report issued by the school shows no dormitories or apartments were at full occupancy last year, and one has been taken entirely offline.

“West Virginia spent heavily to secure a coveted spot on a list of top-tier research universities, a goal it achieved in 2016. Money also went to athletics and additional student services, and to a bevy of consultants.”

Oh yes, the athletic department. It actually makes money, thanks to joining the Big 12, which will soon split $380 million a year in TV money alone among its 14 schools. (Unless you have an hour for me to answer, don’t ask why it is the Big 12 has 14 schools and another 13 affiliates.)

WV Sports Now reported in June, “Some may equate struggling on the football field [the team went 5-7] to led to an athletic department struggling to make money. That is not necessarily the case, and is definitely not the case for the WVU athletic department.

“The West Virginia Mountaineers were in fact among the most profitable athletic departments in the country in 2022. Based on the numbers compiled by the College Basketball Report, WVU made $8.12 million throughout all of last year.”

WVU’s stadium becomes West Virginia’s largest city every time the football team plays there. Football and men’s basketball subsidize all those girl’s sports.

Gee’s management style is to just do what the bureaucracy tells him to do while he does fund-raising. The bureaucracy worries more about its pensions and other benefits than it does its job.

The Journal said, “West Virginia University long relied on a budget model in which each department is generally assigned the same amount of money it got the prior year, plus a little more to cover inflation. Provost Maryanne Reed said at a faculty senate meeting in May that administrators didn’t previously have data on how much it cost to deliver each academic program.

“Incremental budgeting is appealing in its simplicity, but it lets leaders sidestep tough conversations about priorities, say higher-education finance experts.

“West Virginia is working with a new budget model this year, which Gee says will reward enrollment growth.”

He still does not acknowledge that the school’s enrollment is shrinking and will continue to shrink as he cuts classes.

The Journal said, “The school said just about 2% of students would be affected by the proposed cuts. That counts only people with primary majors in the fields being eliminated.

“Adam Komisaruk, a professor and director of graduate studies in the English department, said the proposed cuts would make staffing nearly impossible for the hundreds of first-year writing courses that students are required to take.”

Just what we need, more illiterate college students who cannot string 10 words together.

But Gee like so many public school superintendents is willing to sacrifice education for the sake of saving the education bureaucracy. And so WVU holds academic programs hostage to pressure the legislature to pay the ransom.