Editorial: WVU degree scandal makes all graduates look bad

‘ ‘ ‘ Last year, West Virginia University endured scorn of harrowing proportions after the… ‘ ‘ ‘ Last year, West Virginia University endured scorn of harrowing proportions after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the school had awarded an M.B.A. to Heather Bresch, an executive of Mylan, Inc. and daughter of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, even though Bresch did not complete enough credits to earn the degree. ‘ ‘ ‘ But the scorn could potentially get far worse. According to a report released by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, WVU’s records show that the University awarded a total of 288 degrees to students who did not meet credit requirements between May 1997 and August 2008. Furthermore, WVU’s Interim President C. Peter Magrath says none of the degrees will be rescinded. ‘ ‘ ‘ If a student didn’t earn a degree, he shouldn’t be awarded one. While it’s understandable that WVU might not want to rescind degrees awarded as many as 12 years ago, the decision certainly doesn’t help the school’s standing. The school could easily offer the needed credits to those alumni who received the certifications wrongfully, allowing them to complete their courses and rectify the mistake. ‘ ‘ ‘ The deeper issue, though, is that this scandal calls into question the process by which all schools award degrees in the first place. If credit hours become arbitrary and meaningless, and all it takes to graduate is an adviser’s signature, it cheapens the entire education of not only those students who didn’t earn their degrees, but of all the thousands of others who did. ‘ ‘ ‘ In a sense, this is grade inflation taken to its logical extreme. Just as some students are awarded an ‘A’ grade for only doing ‘B’-level work, these graduates got a reward indicating hard work and perseverance that they didn’t have to undertake fully. Just as the gradual inflation of grades is often pointed to as an indicator of slipping academic standards, the WVU situation could be seen as an indicator of those same standards being dropped entirely. ‘ ‘ ‘ This isn’t to say that the students in question were not hard workers or intelligent people ‘mdash; it would be interesting to see if any of the 288 unearned degrees were awarded as a result of clerical errors or miscommunication between students and advisers. What it does show is that the rigorous process of vetting students and forcing them to work hard for a degree to symbolize that achievement was not in place consistently at WVU. ‘ ‘ ‘ This scandal could also be an opportunity to push for stronger open-records laws for private and state-related schools to verify that similar practices aren’t in place at Pitt or other universities. That reproachful behavior of this sort could go on for so long ‘mdash; more than 10 years ‘mdash; at a state school forces into question the practices of other schools where problems haven’t been reported. ‘ ‘ ‘ In the end, WVU’s degree scandal doesn’t just hurt the school or the students to whom it gave unearned degrees. It hurts the entire institution of higher education and every person in the college system.