The situation at West Virginia University is a complicated one, with a confluence of complex factors culminating in a jaw-dropping budget deficit and plans to cut back staff, faculty and programs. This will be the first of a series of editorials about WVU’s budget shortfall and the university’s proposed responses.
In announcing its budget shortfall of $45 million, WVU cited decreased student enrollment as a significant contributing factor. However, that’s one of the few factors the university should have been able to see coming.
When E. Gordon Gee took the reins as WVU’s president in 2014, his goal was to have 40,000 students enrolled across the university’s multiple campuses, mirroring the expansion he spearheaded at Ohio State University. His vision for a larger WVU coincided with efforts already underway to build luxury student housing in Sunnyside, and under his tenure, WVU has continued its building spree not just in Morgantown, but across its satellite campuses statewide. Unfortunately, all that expensive construction got underway right as America began a cultural shift away from four-year degrees.
As younger Millennials and older Gen Zers already know, a bachelor’s degree doesn’t have the same value today it had several decades ago. By the time the youngest Millennials were graduating high school in the early 2010s, it was already expected they would need a master’s degree or higher to compete in professional fields oversaturated with four-year-degree holders.
By the time the mid- to late-2010s rolled around, America finally noticed the imbalance in the modern workforce: There were too many college graduates for the number of professional positions available and not enough trade/technical school graduates for the plethora of blue-collar jobs that had gone unfilled. In the reverse of the conventional wisdom, degree holders were flipping burgers while people with tech program certifications were making high five-figure salaries.
School systems across the nation — and in West Virginia — responded by expanding technical programs and encouraging high schoolers to consider trade schools as a viable alternative to a college degree. And they were right to do so.
That trend — fewer college-bound high school graduates and more trade school enrollees — has been visible for roughly a decade. A look at WVU’s total enrollment data (including satellite campuses and associated colleges) shows a slow but fairly steady decline since the peak in 2011 at 32,733 students — down to a little over 27,000 in fall 2022.
But it’s not just that fewer young adults are pursuing higher education. In West Virginia, there are fewer young adults to pursue higher education.
WVU is the state’s land-grant institution, and it has been sustained by generations of West Virginians staying in state to earn their degrees. But the Mountain State is losing population, and what population remains is aging — not exactly the ideal demographic for undergraduate programs. While in-state students should continue to be the primary target for recruitment, the university will have to increasingly look outside the state’s borders for new students.
WVU can’t control student enrollment, but it could have — and should have — monitored education and demographic trends and adjusted accordingly. Instead, it banked on that 40,000-student dream. Unfortunately, reality has caught up with it.
