The blunt fact is that the J O B of Marshall University is to educate West Virginians. Particularly southern West Virginians, a place where the public schools are mediocre at best and in many cases grossly inadequate. And, in doing so, provide the state with the professionals it needs to form a civil society (or to provide those who wish to leave with the skills to do so). A job that WVU turned its back on, decades ago, and to which, with a few exceptions in a few fields, the state colleges are simply not up to.
That is an important job. Possibly the most important job of any state agency in the state.
WVU has a unique business plan. Bordering on states that have a tiered system of higher education (meaning you have to be smart to go to the big school with the sports and all of that) and states that give more aid to the students and less direct funding to the school (a product of the Catholic populations) WVU figured out that with its de facto open admissions, ultra low out-of-state tuition, massive state over-funding, and a big-time atmosphere, it could fill its seats with people thin-enveloped from their home state schools. Since the faculty is 95% not Appalachian, this had the added advantage of allowing them to associate with the people they want to teach. WVU has contempt for the very people who love it so much, which is the irony of the whole thing.
This has no application to anything Marshall is, or should want to be.
WVSU (sic) also has a unique business plan. 95% white, it is still run by the 5% and plays the race card every time it is threatened. Generations ago, the smart thing for a black person in the South to do was GTFO of the South. In WV’s case, mostly to DC. Fine. But those people, now 3 or 4 generations removed, continue to fill State’s seats by sending people who have NEVER lived here “home” to go to school. That is “legacy tuition”. WV, however, being one of the white-est states, fills the rest of the seats with Charleston kids that won’t leave mommy and daddy. All you really need to know is that State takes in about 5 freshmen for every 1 person it graduates. That is a dysfunctional and pointless institution. Educating middle class and upper middle class black DC swamp creatures and poor white Charleston kids, leaving 4 out of 5 with no degree and lots of debt.
Thank God Marshall is not like that.
The rest of the state colleges mostly churn out people who you hardly would know went to college, so little is the social and academic impact of their limited and unchallenging course work.
Which brings us to MU. Love it, but the reality is that giving out-of-state students in-state rates, absent the “them theys is usens” non-alumni loyality to WVU or the racial ridiculousness of State, is a recipe for economic failure. The other reality is that, with a few exceptions like HELP and forensic science, there is no reason for some dorm kid in some other state to attend MU over a very similar school in his or her own state.
No, the future for Marshal is pretty simple. Do its J O B . Continue to do the heavy lifting of lifting the youth of a poor and ignorant state out of poverty and ignorance.
As to growth, the key to growth, as I have said, lies in shuttering of state colleges; and in making sure that WV high schoolers understand that a Marshall diploma is worth about 100 times more than one from a state college, and the majority out-of-state students and faculty at WVU will laugh at you.
Go Herd.
