WVSU announces plan to help students transition from community colleges

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Community college students should soon be able to transfer their credits to West Virginia State University more easily to complete a bachelor’s degree.

WVSU President Anthony Jenkins unveiled the outline of a plan to accomplish this during his annual State of the University address on Thursday. He said that, next fall, the school will partner with BridgeValley Community and Technical College and New River Community and Technical College to align their programs so students who complete an associate degree can apply all those credits toward a bachelor’s degree.

“So that student who spent the last two years earning an associate’s degree, or 50 credits, now walks into the door of a four-year institution and we say, ‘You’re really a freshman and you have to start over.’ ”

The Community and Technical College Education System, the state agency that oversees all of the two-year colleges, has pushed two-year schools to partner with their four-year counterparts. About 42 percent of all students who transfer out of a community college go on to a four-year college, according to recent data from the National Student Clearinghouse.

In West Virginia, though, there has been a significant drop off in the number of such transfers. From 2010-14, there was almost a 22 percent drop in community college students who go on to enroll in a bachelor’s degree program, according to the most recent data from the CTCE.

The university will have advisers work directly with students at community colleges to help smooth the transition.

The program, which Jenkins calls “Straight to State,” will begin next fall. That same semester, WVSU will launch a program to freeze the cost of tuition for students who participate in its dual-enrollment program, which allows high school students to take college courses.

Also Thursday, Jenkins said he is launching a complete review of all the academic programs offered by the university. Provost Kumara Jayasuriya will be charged with completing a strategic plan for academic affairs, which could mean eliminating some programs the school offers or expanding others, Jenkins said.

“We have got to make sure the academic offerings we’re offering are relevant to what the industry needs,” Jenkins said. “We have to balance what we can do to meet industry needs and prepare students for careers coming down the pipeline.”

Jayasuriya also is a member of a new budget efficiency task force that Jenkins assembled earlier this year. Jenkins asked a group of his top administrators to find ways to cut $1.5 million from the school’s budget next year.

The task force will look at four areas for ways to save money: efficiency, programs, services and personnel. The group has free reign to look at any way to save money, everything from offering less-specialized elective courses to determining if the school is being as energy efficient as possible.

“The more we can save on that front, the less we have to pass off to our students,” Jenkins said. “I am not about passing off the cost of higher education to our students.”

The group is to deliver a plan to the president in November.

Jenkins also announced that the school’s enrollment is 3,879, a 10 percent jump over last year’s enrollment of 3,514. State government officials will release verified enrollment totals later this year for every public college in West Virginia.