WVU, Marshall presidents thank Justice, legislators for "freedom" bill

Stories | WVU Today | West Virginia University

West Virginia University President Gordon
Gee, Marshall
University President Jerome Gilbert and West
Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine Michael Adelman today (April 25) issued a joint statement following Gov. Jim
Justice's signing of HB 2815, granting greater authority to the schools'
governing boards. 

The
text of the statement: 


We are writing to
express our deepest thanks to the state Legislature and Gov. Jim Justice for
taking action to modernize the state's higher education governance system so
that it can operate efficiently and serve all West Virginians. 
By overwhelming
margins in both houses, lawmakers voted to give governing boards at West
Virginia University, Marshall University and the West Virginia School of
Osteopathic Medicine greater power to set policies befitting their
institutions, instead of relying on one-size-fits-all oversight from the state
Higher Education Policy Commission. 
This action puts
West Virginia in line with many other states who have given their large public
universities greater autonomy as state funding for those universities has
declined. 
As Johns Hopkins
University President Ronald Daniels wrote in “The Chronicle of Higher Education”
last year, public universities “are subject to an arcane web of state
bureaucratic rules that can reach every corner of the university … These sorts
of rules reduce the autonomy of public research universities to act, sometimes
in significant ways.” 
In West Virginia,
where West Virginia University, Marshall University and the West Virginia
School of Osteopathic Medicine have lost nearly $44 million combined in state
appropriation over the past several years, this new governance structure will
help us be nimble and innovative enough to overcome our state’s challenges. 
While funding has
decreased in recent years, the need for higher education is at an all-time
high. Since 2008, 11.8 million jobs have emerged in this country. But only
80,000 of those jobs required only a high-school education. The rest required
either a college degree or substantial post-secondary training. 
Unfortunately,
West Virginia has ...

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