Justice is tone deaf to stress on higher ed

Jun. 23—We are hard pressed to think of a time when Gov. Jim Justice has been as tone deaf as he has been this past week. Once again, as he has been doing this past year, he was bragging out loud about state tax revenue surpluses, on this occasion on West Virginia Day on Tuesday, while bean counters and administrators at West Virginia University were sharpening their knives to cut $45 million from the school's annual budget.

The state budget surplus? Coming in around $1.8 billion — with a b — the governor said, smiling proudly for the TV cameras.

Well, eviscerating higher education is nothing to smile about, governor, but that is what is happening on your watch. And it is certainly no way to make a state attractive to anyone looking for a place to call home. But it does tell anyone paying attention what you value — and what you do not.

How the state got to a point where it was rolling in excess revenues has been discussed ad infinitum once journalists got wise to the governor's budget games. In short, Justice and his strategists kept expenses flat, artificially low, even as an extraordinary runup in inflation undercut the reach of those dollars. Justice was suffocating funds for state services that were already under extreme stress.

He knows that and, as of today, has shown no remorse. Fact is he couldn't care less — and that is showing up, too.

It is why there has been a vast number of vacancies across multiple state agencies these past several years, most critically those with Child Protective Services who are charged with keeping abused and neglected children out of harm's way. The vacancy rate for guards at our state's regional jails is running as high as 60 to 70 percent in some locations.

As of January, there were more than 6,100 children in foster care in a state whose agencies have shown they have myriad troubles caring for and keeping an eye on our most vulnerable populations.

And now, higher ed. We have seen this train rolling down the tracks for a good long while, but the governor has done what? Nothing. The damage being inflicted on the Morgantown campus is sudden, deep and, perhaps, irreversible.

Here is a sampling: A dozen graduate and doctorate programs are being cut and students — and their parents — will see a 3 percent tuition increase, according to reporting by The Associated Press. The staff will be reduced by $7 million consuming 132 positions, including 38 faculty positions.

The 12 programs that are being dropped are graduate studies for finance, instructional design and technology, and — in a state that needs an infusion of educational talent, a state with some 1,400 teaching positions in K-12 schools filled with unqualified instructors, a state whose reading and language and math testing scores lag most of the nation — elementary and secondary education.

This all is just the first course of an unappetizing meal if trends play out. President Gordon Gee says the shortfall, which could rise to $75 million in five years, is the result of a declining enrollment with the school's student population having dropped by 10 percent over the past eight years.

We pity Maryanne Reed, provost and vice president of academic affairs for West Virginia University, who, given the chore of putting the best face on what is playing out at WVU, the state's largest university, said this: A review of all academic programs was underway "with the added goal of creating a smaller and more focused program portfolio."

That is market spin and everyone knows it.

WVU will be smaller and less ambitious. It will not have as many professors and students and, as such, instruction will not be as robust, challenging and rigorous, and the school's graduates not as qualified.

With tuition hikes, fewer students will be able to pursue a college education in West Virginia, a state with an already depressingly low "going to" rate.

Who knows what will happen to athletics, but we suspect research dollars will dry up to some extent.

In a foreboding note, university officials say a list of programs "tagged for further review" will be made available the week of July 10.

On Tuesday, with the blood letting being planned in Morgantown, the governor stepped in front of the cameras and crowed, as he does, about the surplus. "How in the world does it get any better than this?" he said, pegging the excess dollars as $1.8 billion when all is said and done.

Well, we have some ideas, governor, about investing in the state's future, but are certain that you stopped listening long ago.