I was probably a bit harsh in a lead I wrote for my story last week where I accused Gov. Jim Justice of inserting himself in the attempt by the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission to pull the degree-granting authority for Alderson Broaddus University in Barbour County.

However, I didn’t really know any other way to accurately describe it at the time. I was also mildly annoyed I had to write about the issue to begin with. My beat is state government, and while I do cover the HEPC from time to time, I usually only cover it as far as its broad actions overseeing the state’s public colleges and universities.

Alderson Broaddus is a private, not public university, and I typically leave coverage of issues with private colleges and universities to newspapers serving those communities. I’ve been reading the coverage of Alderson Broaddus’ issues with great interest, but it really wasn’t in my beat. That changed with the involvement of Justice.

The HEPC was set to meet July 28 to most likely pull Alderson Broaddus’ degree-granting authority based on severe financial issues and lack of transparency about its financial issues with higher education regulators. Officials with Alderson Broaddus were prepared to make their case for why they could overcome those issues and continue serving students.

That all changed when Justice issued a statement on the eve of the meeting urging the HEPC to take a pause and not have the emergency meeting, calling for the HEPC, school officials, and legislative leadership to meet and see if a solution could be found to keeping the university from being closed.

Phone calls were exchanged over that weekend and a meeting of sorts was held early Monday with staff from the Governor’s Office. I’m not privy to what was said in those calls and that meeting, but by Monday afternoon, Justice was singing a different tune and saying the HEPC should be allowed to do its job.

Well, the HEPC was trying to do its job until the Governor called for the pause. Instead, the emergency meeting that was supposed to be held July 28 was held July 31. Instead of being able to defend themselves in person, officials with Alderson Broaddus were forced to participate in the meeting by calling in. Several school officials were in Chicago that day preparing for a meeting the next day with the regional accreditation body trying to plead for the school’s life.

HEPC Chancellor Sarah Armstrong Tucker brought the hammer down. She laid out the school’s multi-million-dollar debts, pointing out the school was $500,000 in the red, was begging alumni for donations just to make payroll and to make a $67,000 payment to the City of Philippi just to keep its utilities on, and how it was basing its budget on projected enrollment when the school was already not meeting enrollment projections.

Pulling Alderson Broaddus’ degree-granting authority could not be easy for Tucker and the HEPC. But they have already seen what happens when a school collapses in the middle of a semester when students are on campus. Ohio Valley University (where I spent three semesters more than 20 years ago) is the poster child for what happens when the HEPC fails to act quick enough.

The Higher Learning Commission, the body that AB officials were meeting with in Chicago last week, stated that the university has voluntarily resigned its accreditation. It’s now working to wind up operations by the end of the year, ensuring that students set to graduate in the fall semester can complete their degrees, and helping other students transfer.

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This isn’t the first time Justice has gotten involved to keep a private university from closing. He was vocal about keeping Wheeling University open in 2019 when it was dealing with similar financial issues. In fact, Wheeling University was still on probationary accreditation status as of last summer and had narrowly avoided having its degree-granting authority pulled in 2019.

The difference between the Wheeling University situation in 2019 and the Alderson Broaddus situation now is that Justice acted more as a cheerleader in 2019 and didn’t tell the HEPC to wait. The Governor appoints the members of the HEPC, but otherwise has no authority over that body. Instead of telling HEPC to not do its job, he wrote the HEPC a letter urging them to keep Wheeling University open.

Thankfully, other public and private colleges and universities in the state are stepping up to take in Alderson Broaddus students. But that’s not strictly an altruistic thing: Nearly every public and private college and university in the state is having trouble with reduced enrollment that is affecting budgets. West Virginia University’s budget woes are partially due to banking on student enrollment numbers that never jumped up.

The potential pool of students in the state keeps decreasing, and every college and university in the state is competing in that same market. The difference between the private and public schools is when the public schools have issues, we’re on the hook for that.

I often think back to the 2010 departmental review by the Legislative Auditor’s Office of the HEPC that found that West Virginia had too many public colleges and universities for its population compared to similarly sized states.

“The abundance of four-year institutions in the state is counterintuitive to the low level of educational attainment among residents,” the report stated. “This relatively large number of baccalaureate institutions in the state may not be necessary.”

“The (HEPC) went on to note that institutions should focus on attracting nontraditional and out-of-state students to keep enrollment rates high enough to sustain the institutions,” the report continued. “Due to the rural and isolated nature of some institutions, this strategy may not be able to sustain some of the more isolated institutions.”

If this was the case in 2010 based on population numbers and our state population has only decreased since then, how much more valid is the assessment today?