The West Virginia Miracle Requires Higher-Education Reform. Legislators in the Mountain State have far more work to do.

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | April 17, 2024 | Adam Kissel

[karpov]

West Virginia has no time to lose. Its 55-percent labor-force participation rate is better only than Mississippi’s. Life expectancy is under 73 years, again placing West Virginia in second-to-worst place among U.S. states. Median family income is also near the bottom, whatever family size we compare. Economic development is our best way out, and the surest path to that result is education reform.

It’s not a matter of sending more high schoolers to a four-year college program. While it’s true that completing college—indeed, having any college education regardless of completion—is positively correlated with higher income, artificially increasing access is not the answer. Graduation rates are too low for that.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s (ACTA’s) “What Will They Learn?” database shows why. The 13 institutions that ACTA reviewed have four-year graduation rates ranging from 17 percent up to flagship West Virginia University’s (WVU’s) 44 percent. The education-research firm College Factual’s data tend to diverge but are still grim. For example, College Factual reports WVU’s four-year graduation rate as 35 percent vs. ACTA’s 44.

Six-year graduation rates do not restore confidence: WVU’s rate is 58 percent. West Virginia State University’s is 34 percent. And West Virginia is not so different on this measure than other states, such as Louisiana. Huge numbers of students are not able to finish their degrees, but they end up with college debt anyway after years of being outside the full-time workforce, not having developed marketable skills, but having become disconnected from the communities and families they left in order to pursue their college hopes.

This must change. West Virginia substantially over-invests in our over-enrolled four-year public colleges, especially when compared to investments in our career-college system.

[ComputerGuy]

The Higher Education Policy Commission.

[catnipman]

check this documentary out if you want to see the REAL problems in West Virginia, namely endemic welfare and epidemic drug addiction:

“The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia”