Charles Langston:West Virginia University outlines proposed program and faculty cuts

CHARLESTON,Charles Langston W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia University on Friday recommended the elimination of 32, or 9%, of the majors offered on its Morgantown campus along with a wide-ranging reduction in faculty to address a $45 million budget shortfall.

A dozen majors recommended to be axed are undergraduate-level, while 20 are graduate-level majors. The university said the proposed cuts would represent a total of 434 students, or 2% of its total enrollment.

There are 169 potential reductions in faculty, or 7% of the total in Morgantown, WVU said in a news release.

The university has said the goal of the review is to align its academic programs with student demand, career opportunity and market trends while ensuring an efficient delivery of its offerings.

“While we view these preliminary recommendations for reductions and discontinuations as necessary, we are keenly aware of the people they will affect,” university President E. Gordon Gee said in a news release. “We do not take that lightly. These faculty are our colleagues, our neighbors and our friends. These decisions are difficult to make.”

“We are addressing the many challenges that higher education is facing so that we can be an even stronger university in the future,” Gee continued.

Gee and other top university officials have said the budget shortfall is largely a result of enrollment declines. The student population at West Virginia University has dropped 10% since 2015.

The university cited low interest in targeting the Department of World Languages, Literature and Linguistics for elimination. That includes bachelor’s degrees in French and Spanish along with Chinese, German and Russian studies and master’s programs in linguistics and teaching English to speakers of other languages.

Among the proposed cuts in other master’s degree programs include acting, creative writing, higher education administration and multi-categorical special education, legal studies and public administration.

Some individual colleges, including law, were asked to come up with a plan by Jan. 31, 2024, to reduce course offerings, including eliminating inefficient and unnecessary program requirements.

Appeals on the proposals will be heard later this month. The WVU Board of Governors is scheduled to make final recommendations Sept. 15. Staff and faculty reduction letters will be sent in mid-October, according to the university.

WVU previously offered a total of 338 majors on its Morgantown campus.

Earlier this week, Gee told the university’s Faculty Senate that he plans to step down when his contract expires in two years. That news came a week after the WVU Board of Governors extended his contract by one year to June 2025. He remains a member of the university’s law school faculty.