WVU president does the unthinkable — he's the first to bring academia into reality

In an April 1 edition of The Daily Athenaeum, West Virginia University’s student newspaper, some editors in the early 1980s who shall remain nameless, carefully — in those pre-Photoshop days — traced a full-length photo of WVU President E. Gorden Gee with a razor and on the front page juxtaposed his image with a tall, raven-haired celebrity under the headline “Cher Hooks Up With College Prez.”

We never heard what he thought of it, but there was little concern that the pathologically good-natured Gee would take offense. Forty years ago, he was well-respected by students not only for his charm, but for the recognition that he was smarter than the average bear.

Today, Gee is being vilified by academia for proposed $45 million in cuts to degree programs which fell heavily on languages and the humanities, but also bled into the hard sciences, including math.

Gee announced that the school would cut 32 of its 338 majors and 7% of its faculty, predictably and understandably generating an outcry from students, faculty and outside academics..

Gee is criticized for making major capital improvements to the campus in the 2010s, when it was hoped the student population could increase from 30,000 to 40,000 students. And maybe it would have, were it not for the pandemic, which changed many things, not the least of which is education.

Gee’s critics say he should be demanding more state funding, but presumably they themselves have never had to deal with the West Virginia State Legislature, a group for which education is not an affliction.

With the advent of fracking in the early 2000s, the legislature squandered a fortune in revenue by cutting taxes for out-of-state business interests instead of investing in state programming for the people. But even if it did have the money, an increased appropriation would have been a tough sell because, culturally, education today is tied to elitism — elitism being only slightly less frowned upon in West Virginia than rooting for Pitt.

Being the first in a family to attend college used to elicit pride; now, among a certain cultural subset, it elicits scorn. This has further eroded enrollments, which of course erodes revenue.

Gee was reading the room when he declined to deflect blame away from himself by asking the Legislature to close WVU’s budget gap — and making lawmakers take the rap for subsequent educational cuts. Because in the end, what would that have accomplished other than to create further animosity between the two institutions?

This is not the time to be asking a deep-red Legislature to bail out a doctorate in Mandarin Chinese. And besides that, in this legislative pool brimming with bourbon and tobacco juice swims a bit of a point: For all its merits, education cannot be immune from the rules of sustainability and responsibility that guide most every other facet of American life.

Higher education has ignored reality for too long, raising tuition to unconscionable levels and shackling graduates to debt they will spend much of their lives trying to repay. They have perpetuated the line that life without an advanced degree is scarcely worth living and intentionally or not helped create the divide that is tearing at our national fabric.

Academics were quick to cancel courses in the trades citing lackluster interest, yet when a handful of kids out of a student body of 27,000 are deprived of an advanced degree in linguistics, those same academics act as if a great natural right of mankind has been breached.

The recent thuds you heard were the sound of fainting New York City eggheads hitting the floor when Gee suggested that kids wanting to learn German could use an app.

This surprises them? It can be supposed that when one is absorbed in pedological pursuits, there is no time to keep up with modern advances, like artificial intelligence, or perhaps the invention of the toaster.

No one is saying so out loud, but you can bet there are dozens of college presidents across the country who are thrilled that Gee stepped forward to speak the truth and accept the resulting broadside. That will soften the blow when they need to report their schools as well are in financial straits and need to make cuts.

And it may also kindle a nationwide academic discussion too long in coming.

Gee’s apparent premise — that it does not make sense, financial or otherwise, for every university in this great nation to offer every degree — ought to be obvious. If a kid from Parkersburg can play football for Alabama, a kid from Elkins can learn Russian at a school in the Southeast designated as a linguistics hub. Meanwhile, kids from other states can come to WVU’s areas of excellence, such as forensics, engineering and neuroscience.

And, of course, journalism. Just ask Cher.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: E. Gorden Gee's proposed cuts at WVU a chance at fixing college costs