Photo caption: Woodburn Hall on the downtown campus of West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. (Lexi Browning | West Virginia Watch)
Students say the reduction in programs with tuition waivers will reduce opportunities in one of the nation’s poorest states.
BY: AMELIA FERRELL KNISELY – SEPTEMBER 26, 2023 5:55 AM
For John Fox, a graduate student in West Virginia University’s acclaimed Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, a tuition waiver from the university meant he could pursue his passion.
He was surprised when, ahead of the Board of Governor’s decision on Sept. 15 to slash 28 academic programs and 143 jobs, WVU leaders made multiple mentions of students on tuition waivers as justification for eliminating programs, particularly when they serve critical roles in teaching courses, academic research and more.
An aspiring author, Fox enrolled in the competitive graduate program. He teaches two lower-level English courses in exchange for a tuition waiver and stipend.
“Even though it wasn’t specifically about my program, grad students do a lot of work for the university,” said Fox, 27, who grew up in Morgantown. “What do you do without us?,” he asked.
Over the last five years, around 53% of WVU graduate students from West Virginia received some type of tuition waiver, according to the university.
“If there hadn’t been a waiver or a stipend, I would not have been able to do this,” he said.
WVU is a land grant university rooted in a state with one of the nation’s highest child poverty rates, meaning students regularly rely on financial help to access higher education. The university offers a number of tuition waivers to undergraduate and graduate students to cover costs. One undergraduate waiver targets kids in the state’s foster care system.
University Associate Provost Mark Gavin, when presenting information to the Board of Governors, made multiple mentions about the number of students on tuition waivers as he outlined proposed cuts. He pointed it out when discussing graduate degrees in Resource Management and world languages – programs now being eliminated.
He said the graduate programs in Higher Education and Higher Education Administration were “heavily subsidized through tuition waivers and are not serving a specific state need.”
Associate Provost for Graduate Academic Affairs Richard Thomas told West Virginia Watch that there are no plans to do away with tuition waivers at WVU, and they’re a “very important tool to bring excellent students to Morgantown.”
“We use them as a recruitment tool,” he added.
Kaytely Carpenter, 23, is a graduate student in the English Department and receives a tuition waiver while teaching courses.
A Weston native, she emphasized that cutting graduate programs that offer tuition waivers will only make it harder for in-state students to pursue higher education at WVU.
“It really upset me,” she said. “You’re taking opportunities away from [West Virginia], and it just perpetuates the poverty cycle.”
Graduate programs marked for elimination will lose teachers
The reduction in graduate students with tuition waivers will also reduce the teaching pool at the university.
This semester, there are 603 graduate teaching assistants at WVU, according to university Communications Director April Kaull.
Carpenter felt that the comments about tuition waivers, which she viewed as a reward earned by a good performance in undergrad, devalued the role graduate students bring to the university as employees.
“It shows people that they’re not valued like they’re supposed to be,” she said.
The Board of Governors eliminated WVU’s master’s and PhD programs in mathematics (the only math doctorate program in the state) – eventually taking with it the students who teach introductory-level classes.
The program generated more than $7 million a year to the university through fellowships and other funding.
Assistant math professor Ela Celikbas said the department is likely to lose 16 faculty members. The current math graduate students will be able to finish their degrees at WVU, according to university administrators, but won’t be replaced as the program closes.
The remaining faculty will take on bigger course loads, Celikbas said, though there are still questions about what that might look like.
“Next semester, we are having limited courses,” she said. “The class sizes are getting bigger.”
She added, “Who wants to stay here under these conditions? I don’t know.”
Thomas explained that graduate tuition waivers are expensive for the university. WVU also offers health insurance to graduate teachers, researchers and service personnel, he said.
This fall semester, there are 2,407 master’s and doctoral students on some type of graduate waivers – or 58% all graduate students.
“We started a couple of years ago being intentional to get more faculty in the classroom teaching and using a more strategic approach to tuition waivers,” Kaull said. “I also want to clarify that tuition waivers are different than tuition scholarships which we are moving to wherever we can since tuition scholarships give students greater flexibility.
More faculty cuts announced
It’s unclear at this point how many more faculty and staff members will be let go as the university continues to make changes as part of its “Academic Transformation” to become financially-stable and a “modern” R-1 institution.
While university leaders have stressed they’re not in a financial “crisis,” the swift-moving cuts to programs and jobs throughout this year were, in part, to make up for the university’s financial deficit.
Earlier this year, administrators cut roughly 130 employees in an effort to save $7 million. They’re still in the process of reviewing departments and more for cost-saving measures, and they’ll review the Beckley and Keyser campuses beginning 2024.
“The University must prioritize resources to those areas that can provide for growth,” President E. Gordon Gee said in an “open letter to the people of West Virginia.”
On Sept. 22, WVU administration quietly eliminated eight additional faculty positions in the university’s Chambers College of Business and Economics. The department was “tasked to free up an additional $1 million from [its] budget beginning July 1, 2024,” WCHS reported.
The latest round of job cuts wasn’t followed by a university press release, unlike the Sept. 15 announcement to eliminate 143 faculty positions and more recent news about upcoming job cuts at the university’s libraries.
Carpenter, who wants to teach English at a university, had planned on staying at WVU to obtain her PhD. Now, she said the Academic Transformation’s changes to her program, which include a faculty reduction, will likely make her look elsewhere to continue her education.
“I like the people in my program, and I really don’t want to see what happens to [the program] after so many people have to leave,” Carpenter said. “I’m kind of getting the sense that this was just the first round of things.”
She continued, “I like Morgantown and didn’t want to leave. I don’t know if that’s going to happen now.”
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