Report: WVU wrong to award Bresch degree

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia University administrators showed “seriously flawed” judgment in awarding Gov. Joe Manchin’s daughter a master’s degree she didn’t earn, rushing to protect her and themselves from media scrutiny, a panel investigating the dispute says.

But the erroneous decision does not signal widespread or pervasive problems in either record-keeping or the granting of academic credits in the College of Business and Economics, its report concludes.

Failures of process and leadership were “unique to this particular, high-profile case” involving Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch, and there is no reason to question the legitimacy of any other executive master’s of business administration degrees that have been awarded.

After meeting in closed session for 48 minutes Wednesday, the university’s Board of Governors issued a charge to President Mike Garrison, telling him to accept responsibility for the errors in judgment made by members of his administration.

The board also wants Garrison to deliver a plan by its June meeting that will ensure “a situation such as this does not ever happen again.” It also called on him to inform Bresch of the panel’s findings and advise of her right to appeal.

Garrison said he regrets the university has been embarrassed by this situation, and pledged to meet and exceed the board’s charge.

“West Virginia University is strong, and this process — and our honest response to it, both from our office and the board of governors — makes us stronger, and shows that we are a university whose governance is both shared and open,” Garrison said.

Garrison said no decisions have been made yet about discipline, but he accepts responsibility for the panel’s findings.

“There is no substitute in any administration for personal responsibility,” he said.

The damning 95-page report released Wednesday is harshest on Provost Gerald Lang and business school dean Steve Sears, who the panel said had no academic foundation for retroactively granting Bresch the 1998 degree.

However, the report stopped short of recommending any specific disciplinary action against anyone, advising only that WVU “take appropriate action.”

“Mistake was compounded by mistake. An unnecessary rush to judgment, spurred in some measure by an understandable desire to protect a valued alumna and to respond to media pressure, produced a flawed and erroneous result. It didn’t have to happen this way,” the panel concludes.

Rather, the university “should have done just what they said they were doing: They should have treated Ms. Bresch like they would or should have treated any other student who was raising such a complaint about the accuracy of his or her attendance and/or graduation records.”

They should have been “more deliberate, more discerning and more detached,” and relied more on records than verbal assertions, the panel concludes.

“They should have had the courage to accept the fact that they might have to reach a conclusion on the evidence that they did not like or want. They should have assumed the responsibility as academic leaders to make the decisions that needed to be made,” the report states.

In comments made after the report’s release, Lang defended his conduct, saying he and Sears made the best decision possible with incomplete data.

“There was no pressure placed on anyone to make any decision,” he said.

Garrison also said that no pressure came from his office, and vowed that new procedures will be created to insulate anyone at the university from feeling such pressure.

Although Lang acknowledged the panel had access to the same data, he said they reached a different conclusion, but declined to say whether he disagrees with the panel.

“There were two decisions. We made a decision in October and the panel made a different decision. I’m willing to accept the panel’s decision,” he said.

The report does not conclude that Bresch herself did anything wrong in seeking clarification of her situation. Nor does it directly fault Garrison, Bresch’s longtime friend.

It does, however, indicate a failure of leadership at high levels within the administration and suggest there was pressure from Lang and “representatives of the president’s office” to accommodate Bresch.

Lang, as chief academic officer, bears the brunt of the criticism for running the one-hour, Oct. 15 meeting where the decision to grant the degree was made. Also attending were Sears, WVU chief of staff Craig Walker, general counsel Alex Macia, communications director Bill Case and three educators from the business school.

“The panel believes the prevailing sentiment at the meeting, evinced by the actions and comments of the provost and the representatives of the president’s office, was that a way should be found to justify the granting of the degree, if at all possible,” the report says.

“Although the provost asked all four B&E participants at the meeting directly whether they agreed with the final decision to award Ms. Bresch an MBA, the panel believes that the actual or perceived pressure to go along with this decision, not to ’rock the boat,’ was palpable.”

The panel took pains in its report to stress that in its judgment, Bresch’s situation was unique.

“Reference has been made, by some WVU administrators, to other students who have graduated with anomalies in their records,” the report states.

While the panel found a few incomplete grades that were not properly transferred, it found no other case similar to Bresch.

“A fundamental point is that the panel found no student with credits awarded without official enrollment in courses and for which no tuition was paid,” the report concludes.

The five-member panel, led by two WVU faculty members, had been charged with investigating not only whether Bresch completed the required credit hours, but also how the administration responded when questions about the degree arose last fall.

The questions were prompted by an inquiry from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which reported in December that Bresch had earned only 22 of the necessary 48 credits to attain the MBA.

Bresch declined comment Wednesday but recently insisted she had earned her degree fairly, substituting work experience for her final 10-credit semester. The report says that was not the case.

Chairman Roy Nutter issued a statement earlier in the week saying no member of the panel would comment on the report or the process behind it.

Critics of the university have long pointed to Bresch’s political connections. The chairman of Canonsburg, Pa.-based Mylan is a major benefactor of her father and the university, and Bresch is a friend and former classmate of Garrison.

Michael Lastinger, a former Faculty Senate chairman who also served on the panel, voted against Garrison’s appointment a year ago this month.

He represented the concerns of educators who had complained of political cronyism. Garrison was chief of staff under Democratic Gov. Bob Wise, and the Faculty Senate had endorsed the other finalist for the job, former WVU dean M. Duane Nellis.