Some choice quotes:

Despite WVU being a public land-grant university, the state has cut its financial support of the institution by 36 percent, or nearly $100 million, over the past decade. According to an analysis by the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, if the state had continued to finance the university the same as it had a decade ago, WVU would only be facing a $7.6-million deficit, instead of the alleged $45 million deficit.

West Virginia’s state government ended the recent fiscal year with $458 million in unappropriated surplus. In fact, during a recent legislative special session, lawmakers attempted to add $45 million in surplus funds, the same amount as WVU’s projected deficit, to a bill appropriating millions to Marshall University for a cybersecurity program…

WVU’s President E. Gordon Gee has refused to seek further funding from the state, despite the university’s dire budget crisis. Faculty say that this shows the university is capitalizing on the crisis in order to implement planned austerity measures…

Faculty and staff say that this budget crisis is driven by years of financial mismanagement, reckless borrowing and spending decisions related to a failed growth strategy, and overshooting enrollment predictions.

“The WVU administration played an active role in this crisis,” Myya Helm, a 2022 graduate of West Virginia University, told Truthout. “Their proposal is a result of financial mismanagement, lack of institutional transparency, and an astonishing failure to recognize the power of education in transforming the lives of West Virginians.”

In 2018, the Gazette-Mail reported that Gee spent more than $2.2 million of WVU student tuition dollars on private air travel between May 2014 and June 2017. Despite Gee’s exorbitant expenses, in July, WVU’s Board of Governors extended Gee’s $800,000 a year contract, in the fact of the budget crisis. Gee is planning on stepping down as the university’s president in 2025. He intends to serve as a faculty member in the law school, where the university’s proposed cuts plan to eliminate two current faculty.

So the root cause here seems clear. The state government is clearly underfunding the university, yes, but it seems like the university admin is using the public university’s funds as a personal bank account to extract wealth from the state. I suppose I wouldn’t want to fund the university either if i were them.