New WVU President Establishes Lofty Goals For University

West Virginia University’s 27th president, Michael Benson, took office on July 15. Monday, he delivered his state of the university to the faculty senate, in which he emphasized the need to increase the school’s enrollment and improve graduation rates. 

Data from the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission shows WVU’s fall enrollment declined the past two years in a row. WVU’s own data shows the four-year graduation rate has only increased above 50% in the past two years.

“I will tell every single West Virginia high school student, there is a place for you at our university. At your university,” he said. “Perhaps it’s at Kaiser, perhaps it’s at Potomac State, where if you want an open enrollment school and you need to get your academic sea legs under you, that’s the place to go.”

Benson acknowledged that the state’s own K-12 enrollment is shrinking, graduating 18,000 high school students last year, a fraction of neighboring states like Ohio or Pennsylvania. He said the university will need to look to those and other neighboring states to meet new enrollment goals.

The assembled faculty was encouraged to think big, and Benson set a goal to have the university invited to join the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization of research universities, in the coming years. He pointed out that in fiscal year 2024, the organization’s 71 research institutions received 61% of all federal university research and development spending totalling $65.9 billion.

Faculty questioned some of the goals, particularly in the context of the school’s recent academic transformation and being asked to “do more with less.”

Benson emphasized that as enrollment and particularly retention increase, there should be more funding and an improvement of the university’s financial situation. He also vowed to review policies to best support faculty pursuing more research.

“The best teachers are made by being a good researcher, because you bring in your current, whatever the contemporary issue that you’re pursuing in your field, you apply to the class,” Benson said. “So I will be a big supporter of what you want to do in terms of researching.”