WVU officials answer questions on proposed academic program reviews
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CHARLESTON -- Officials at West Virginia University fielded questions from the press one day after releasing a list of academic programs that could face future cuts to further reduce a more than $45 million budget hole.
"I am confident that we will get through these next few challenging months because I believe in West Virginia University," said WVU President E. Gordon Gee in a letter to the WVU community released on Tuesday. "We will get to the other side where we create an educational dynamic of the future. One where students are receiving a high-quality education from faculty who are rewarded and recognized for their contributions."
WVU's Office of the Provost held a virtual media availability over Zoom Tuesday afternoon to answer questions about phase two of the university's Transformation Academic Program Portfolio Review released Monday.
"This is not easy stuff," said Mark Gavin, associate provost at WVU. "At the same time … moving as quickly as we can while being responsible is the answer to this. We need to get through the hard stuff we need to deal with, get to the other side as quickly as possible, and continue to bolster our position on being the university we need to be for our students and for our state. In doing so, we'll also be an attractive home not only for those students, but for faculty ultimately."
The university is reviewing 25 academic programs, including programs in Public Health, Pharmacy, the School of Education, Management, the School of Medicine, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Mining Engineering, Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, the schools of Art and Design, Music and Theatre and Dance, the College of Law, Forestry and Natural Resources; Design and Community Development, Plant and Soil Sciences and Resource Economics and Management.
Eight programs in the Eberly College of Arts and Science are identified for review. These programs include the Center for Women's and Gender Studies, Chemistry, Communications Studies, English, Mathematical and Data Sciences, Philosophy, Public Administration, and World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics.
The results of the academic portfolio review were based on student demand for the programs in questions based on enrollment in the major and five-year trends, and metrics at the department-level based on financial performance and efficiency of instruction. WVU officials said Tuesday that there is no set goal for what programs to cut or future faculty positions to eliminate.
"In the end, what we're looking to achieve is a more strategic, focused, high-quality portfolio of programs that are driven by reputation in direct links to service to the state and its needs and to employers," said Lou Slimak, associate provost for Curriculum and Assessment at WVU.
"That means that some of the diversification that has been happening in higher ed, not just at WVU but in higher ed in general over the last 10 years, has to be clawed back," Slimak continued. "That requires some personnel decisions which are a source of angst for everybody, students included but also faculty obviously."
According to the letters that went out to departments Monday, each program identified is required to complete a self-study by Aug. 1 and submit the self-study to the Office of the Provost by Aug. 11, with staff required to be notified of the portfolio review with 24 hours of receipt of the letter.
"Typical contextual information in these self-studies includes things like accreditation standards that we may not be aware of," Slimak said. "Sometimes as we look at metrics, like faculty-to-student ratio for example, we need to understand what those impacts are. Sometimes there have been changes that are lost to institutional memory and we need to recapture those changes. Sometimes there are changes in process actually already, from faculty to program offerings, that we need to capture."
The WVU Board of Governors approved a $1.256 billion budget on June 23 for fiscal year 2024 beginning Saturday, a 4% increase from its current $1.207 billion budget.
The university is attempting to fill a nearly $45 million hole in its budget caused by increases in expenses and projected decreases in student enrollment, with $24 million coming from the WVU Foundation, a nearly 3% increase in resident and out-of-state tuition, salary and wage cuts, and the elimination of 130 positions (38 of which are faculty members) at a cost of $7 million.
"That was certainly an important set of actions that helped us meet our FY24 budget parameters," Gavin said. "We were able to reduce our operating expenses in real-time by $21 million. That $7 million was one component of meeting $21 million of reduction in FY24...what we are working on now is achieving that same budget reduction of $45 million but doing it for FY25."
Gee issued a call for academic transformation in 2020, though consistent loss of student enrollment, the COVID-19 pandemic, and WVU's projected budget deficits caused the university to accelerate its academic transformation project.
"… We are at an inflection point in higher education that we cannot ignore," Gee said in his letter Tuesday. "The data we gleaned through the Academic Program Portfolio Review and Realignment process positions us for meaningful discussions. It clearly shows what we are doing well. It also shows where we have room for improvement, for growth and for change."
However, a number of faculty and staff at WVU have organized against the university academic transformation plan. The group, West Virginia Campus Workers, chooses to remain anonymous out of concern for possible retaliation by administrators. In a May 24 blog post, West Virginia Campus Workers raised concerns about the metrics being used to determine changes to departments and the use of outside consultants.
After Gee's 2020 call for academic transformation, WVU contracted with the Educational Advisory Board to gather and analyze data on university programs. That study was completed in March at a cost of $1 million. In May, the university contracted with RPK Group to help it analyze the data collected by EAB and WVU.
"To summarize: From December 2020 to May 2023, a period of 29 months, the university has been unable to generate data on the costs of running academic programs and the revenues generated by those programs, even with the help of outside consultants," according to the blog post. "The Provost's office publicly mischaracterized its activity in this regard on their Academic Transformation website. They have now hired a second external consultant to help them with this."
"This was really an internally driven process," Gavin said when asked about the concerns of West Virginia Campus Workers. "It started with metrics that were identified within the Provost's Office. Those metrics are ones we're used to dealing with in many instances, certainly enrollment. These are the kinds of metrics we regularly talk about with our faculty groups, including Faculty Senate and deans. None of these metrics are new or surprising to the larger university community."