Today I want to go on record as being a Marshall University football fan who is pleased with the hiring of “Doc” Holliday as the new head coach, even as I note the absurdity of a $600,000 per year salary for teaching young men how to hang on to an oblong ball.  (Having said that, hanging on to an oblong ball can be quite a feat.  Just ask any Mountaineer fan who watched the Auburn game.)

Besides having a cool nickname, Doc Holliday seems to have made favorable impressions virtually everywhere.  Yet despite this, I’m reading vitriolic comments from both the Marshall University and West Virginia University faithful attacking the choice because of this local boy’s toils for West Virginia University or his new-found allegiance.

Unless they are playing Marshall University, I cheer for the Mountaineers.  Unless they are playing West Virginia University, most of my Mountaineer friends cheer for the Herd.  I really don’t understand the ill will of some fans toward the other school.

This is one MU and WVU fan who wishes Doc Holliday the best.

PS: For those of you wondering from whence the title of this post comes, those words are reputed to have been the last ever uttered by the other, only slightly-more-infamous “Doc” Holliday.

Last weekend Marshall University ended its regular season 6-6 after four losing seasons.  MU probably could save a little money, too, if it dropped football, especially now that its football coach has resigned.  Some people in Morgantown say MU dropped it a few years back anyway.

PS: I’m a Marshall University graduate, so I can get away with this bit of heresy – or possibly not.

The most telling quotation: “My contention has never been that the student did not do the work to earn the grade,” Wyant said. “The problem for me has always been the way it was handled, and the fact that right from the beginning I knew it was not right. Other students do not get that kind of attention.”

Emily Perdue did the work, but it’s a crime because she was given special treatment?  By special treatment, I assume we’re talking about an expedited path for completing coursework after Marshall University treated students in this program pretty shabbily as best I can tell?  And just where is the quid pro quo – the thing that someone at Marshall University was promised in exchange for the favorable treatment?  Again I ask why anyone would take a matter like this before a federal grand jury?

As best I can determine, the only scenario that would produce an indictable federal crime is this: Someone made it easy for Emily Perdue to earn grades for her independent study because her father is the State Treasurer AND he or someone close to him somehow exerted influence inappropriately (not just as a concerned parent) to obtain a favorable outcome on behalf of Miss Perdue.  I can’t imagine the second half of the equation being satisfied in the absence of some clear quid pro quo, which no one has suggested publicly to date.  Furthermore, the quid pro quos available to a State Treasurer, unlike a Governor, Senator, or Congressman, truly are very limited.

While certainly worthy of internal examination by Marshall University’s provost and faculty senate, the Perdue matter hardly seems worthy of CRIMINAL investigation. To an outsider, these subpoenas appear to be political.

In yesterday’s newspaper, Miss Perdue and her father talked to a reporter about the story.  For those of you who were saturated and satiated with coverage of the WVU-Bresch degree scandal, stop reading the newspaper for a few more days.

Interestingly, there appear to be some significant similarities and differences between this story and the Bresch story.

Significant similarities:

• The daughter of a powerful politician;
• A fairly quick investigation/decision by the provost (vulnerable to second-guessing as a “rush to judgment”);
• A decision that favored the daughter; and
• FERPA (privacy law) violations by an individual or individuals seeking to expose the “truth.”

Significant differences:

• We are talking about grades in two classes, not a full-blown degree.
• Miss Perdue actually can produce work that she completed.  She also claims to have met with the dean on multiple occasions recently, which should be easily verifiable.
• Miss Perdue has a reasonably good GPA and appears to be a fairly conscientious student.
• This professor may have an axe to grind with the dean.
• To date, there’s no evidence whatsoever that the State Treasurer or friends of the State Treasurer did anything to influence the outcome.
• To date, there’s no evidence of presidential involvement (beyond, I would hope, his being apprised of the results of the provost’s investigation) or connections to Miss Perdue or her father.
• This issue appears to have been treated as the truly academic matter it is.

Predictions:

• You’ll be learning about several things you probably should not, given federal student privacy laws, as this story unfolds.  This is a serious downside to being a politican’s daughter; you are a public figure whether or not you want to be.
• This story will not have the “legs” that the Bresch story had because of the “axe-grinding” issue and the evidence that work actually was completed.

Lesson No. 1: If investment returns sound too good to be true, they are.

Harvard University got used to double-digit endowment investment returns throughout the early part of this decade and believed they would continue forever.  But at one point last year, Harvard reported an $8 billion, or 22 percent, loss in the value of its endowment over a four month period.  To put that number in perspective, it’s more than 40 percent of West Virginia’s ENTIRE state budget if you include everything from federal revenue to special revenue like West Virginia higher education’s total tuition and fees.  Why did Harvard go from doing so well to doing so badly so quickly?  It was investing significant amounts in high-risk/high-return activities (e.g., high-tech start-ups, credit default swaps, cross-currency swaps, venture capital funds, junk bonds).  What has Harvard had to do to address this crisis?  Sell off parts of its investment portfolio at bargain basement prices and seek bonding at the worst possible time financially – December 2008.  One commenter characterizes the situation in which Harvard finds itself now as a “death spiral.”

In Senate Bill No. 603 (2005), the West Virginia Legislature gave West Virginia University and Marshall University authority to invest a portion of their state funds through their foundations instead of through the Treasurer’s low-risk, low-return options.  Both institutions were slow to take advantage of this flexibility, but ultimately did so – and, I’m pretty sure, have lost money as a result.  The greater flexibility couldn’t have been given at a worse time for those two institutions.

Lesson No. 2: Build what you can afford.

Harvard University initiated an overly ambitious building program, which included construction of a $1.2 billion science complex, that had to be halted.  To put this last amount in perspective, the proposed cost is about twice the ENTIRE annual state appropriation for West Virginia’s higher education system.

Have any West Virginia schools engaged in an ambitious building program that has proven difficult to pay for?  Yes – Fairmont State University.  The debt was undertaken assuming that more students would enroll and thus help shoulder the increased debt.  Shortly after the debt was incurred, enrollment began to drop – stretching the University’s resources.

On Sunday, Charleston Gazette reporter Eric Eyre wrote about the Dow Technology Center.  The article was titled “Supporters try to save South Charleston Tech Park,” which says about all that needs to be said about the current status of the Tech Center.

Unlike Kinetic Park and the WVU Research Park, which have never succeeded in getting off the ground, the Dow Tech Center has a storied past.  Located on a relatively flat area between I-64 and Corridor G in South Charleston, the Union Carbide Tech Center opened in 1949; employed as many as 3,500 chemists, technicians, researchers and engineers in its heyday; and produced more than 30,000 patents worth $18 billion, according to the article.  Intriguingly, this was done in an area without a research university or a significant educational pipeline of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) graduates.  (Nearby West Virginia Tech produced engineering graduates, but not in the quantities or advanced degrees needed to support a major research facility.)

Over the last several decades, the South Charleston Tech Center has fallen on hard times.  With the exception of the Mid-Atlantic Technology Research and Innovation Center (MATRIC), with about 150 employees, not much remains of the Tech Center.  The article quotes a MATRIC employee as saying: “There’s a lot of intellectual capital left in the valley.  This is an ideal place for technology development.  It’s like Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.”  I don’t think this assessment is correct.  While Union Carbide invested millions, if not billions, of dollars in the Tech Center and brought smart people from all over the nation and world to the Kanawha Valley, it is very unlikely that another private sector entity would do the same.  Why not?

• Intellectual Capital.  Unlike Research Triangle Park, which is surrounded by Duke University, the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University, the Tech Center is surrounded by West Virginia State University and the University of Charleston, neither of which has the kinds of strong STEM programs needed to support the Tech Center, and West Virginia University Institute of Technology, which has some of the programs, but is struggling at best, dying at worst.  Furthermore, WVU-Tech’s last foray in the direction of the Dow Tech Center was an unmitigated disaster; just ask the “Take Back Tech” folks.
• Environmental Issues.  Having been aware of at least two efforts to assess environmental conditions at the Center, I know there are widely divergent opinions.  Clearly, there are serious environmental issues associated with a sediment pond on the property.  Beyond that, some people think the site is quite habitable.  Regardless, any time an environmental cloud hangs over a piece of property, it presents serious challenges for any marketer of that property.
• The Owner.  Dow Chemical, which owns the property, faces a financial dilemma.  It has a series of old buildings on property that is of little use to it now, and there’s no single buyer on the horizon willing to take all the property off its hands.  So rather than continue to maintain buildings that are partially occupied, Dow is beginning to level them to reduce maintenance costs.  Additionally, Dow is not the easiest company with which to deal on property issues, I have been told.

Keeping with our dermatological theme, can West Virginia University and/or Marshall University provide the necessary chemical peel?  No.  Neither institution has the critical research mass needed on its home campus.  If significant institutional resources were redirected to South Charleston, it probably would weaken both institutions’ current research-building efforts.  Additionally, there is little likelihood of a new infusion of external resources at either institution to support such an endeavor.

Can West Virginia’s state government provide the necessary chemical peel?  Not without taking an incredible risk.  If the property ended up in the hands of the State, the State also would inherit a set of old facilities that need to be maintained and some serious environmental questions.  Additionally, the State would have to find a significant number of new tenants for the site.  All one has to do is tour facilities on the Capitol Complex to appreciate what a poor landlord the State historically has been.

What’s the best-case scenario?  Create a consortium of educational and private sector organizations in addition to MATRIC to serve as anchor tenants at the Tech Center.  On the education front, create a higher education center, much like the one in Beckley, which has the potential to thrive and grow, and locate the Kanawha Valley’s new Advanced Technology Center on the site.  On the private sector front, market, market, market the Center to anyone and everyone who might have the slightest interest.  It’s a long shot, but I think it’s probably the best shot we have.

The strangest part of the WSAZ story concerned site infrastructure.  Dr. Susan Touma, the on-site dermatologist (an anchor tenant for nerdy technology types?), told the reporter: “We had phone lines put in and a lot of different other things that weren’t in place.”  WSAZ went on to report that contractors were just laying cable for TV and high speed internet access yesterday.  How on earth can you claim to have a technology park when you don’t even have high speed internet access available on your site?  I had always assumed that Kinetic Park had not succeeded because of the lack of needed entrepreneurial talent in Huntington.  Now I learn it may have been the lack of internet?

Before anyone in Morgantown laughs about the plight of Huntington’s Kinetic Park, please take a tour of the West Virginia University Research Park on Route 705 in what otherwise is a booming area of Morgantown.  According to a November 2002 WVU press release about the Research Park, then Vice President for Research John Weete said: “It is fully expected that the WVU Research Park will become a self-sufficient, cost-effective, world-class center of research, technology development, commercialization and business activity resulting from strong links between the park occupants and the intellectual capital of WVU”  … in “multi-tenant buildings totaling approximately 650,000 square feet of space.”  This quote is not intended to be a clue to help you locate the site.  All I can say is: Look for the West Virginia equivalent of sagebrush.  If any place has the sagebrush market cornered, it’s West Virginia University’s Research Park.

As someone will surely tell me, the heartbreak of psoriasis is no laughing matter.  We need to figure out why Kinetic Park, WVU’s Research Park and the Dow Technology Center in South Charleston are in their present conditions and what, if anything, we might be able to do to change it.

Knowing how searches usually are rigged, I must admit to utter and complete bafflement concerning the process used to hire Mike Hamrick as Marshall University’s new athletic director. My hunch is that the search was not rigged, but I have no explanation for the unusual chain of events.

President Stephen Kopp made a big splash a few months ago by announcing a top-notch search committee consisting of board members, faculty and community leaders.  Then he apparently decided to ignore them.  According to Huntington Herald-Dispatch reporter Chuck Landon, President Kopp and two unnamed search committee members traveled to Texas and interviewed the finalists and decided to hire Mike Hamrick without consulting with the full search committee.

Four observations:

• If you are trying to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar, use the average guess of a large group of people rather than relying on your own guess and you’re more likely to win.  The same rule applies to hiring.
• It’s a big mistake to pretend that someone’s opinion matters when it doesn’t.  Nothing demoralizes people more.  And Marshall University doesn’t need any more demoralized people.
• Every person I’ve ever seen hired through a flawed search process has struggled in his or her job.  This does not bode well for Mr. Hamrick or Marshall University athletics.
• If Mr. Hamrick does struggle, there won’t be a search committee to blame for a bad hire.

22 July 2009.  Further reading:  Las Vegas Sun article on Hamrick’s departure.

The article summarizes the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) study of higher education’s role in local and regional economies.  Although its focus is international, the study offers numerous insights of relevance to West Virginia’s community and economic development efforts:

• “In the knowledge economy, people no longer follow jobs – jobs follow people.”  The article explains why technology companies like Google, Yahoo and FAST have set up research and development bases in Trondheim, Norway, which is a mere 500 kilometers from the Arctic Circle.  It is home to the Norwegian University of Technology and has a high concentration of the knowledge, skills and infrastructure needed for innovation.  The temperature there may be cold (a high of 53º F today), but the talent pool is hot!

• “It is becoming clear that despite the ‘death of distance,’ innovation continues to cluster around specific regions and urban centers that have skilled people, vibrant communities, and the infrastructure for innovation.”  Communities without strong higher education institutions are very unlikely to be clusters of innovation.  This is the best argument that can be made for not reducing West Virginia’s number of colleges of universities; the communities of which they are a part will struggle without them.
• “There is considerable resistance among the academic community to local and regional engagement….  The regional agenda is a particularly tough challenge for research intensive universities.”  The same is true in West Virginia.  West Virginia’s community and technical colleges are far more engaged in local and regional development than are other higher education institutions.  Having said that, there are pockets of innovation at virtually all of West Virginia’s higher education institutions (e.g., Concord University’s Nick Joe Rahall, II Technology Center).  The state needs to support this type of activity.
• “A … profitable approach is to transform the economy by building on existing strengths – a strategy that allows for incremental change and growth.”  Their point is that the investment needed to create another “Silicon Valley” would be overwhelming and might not succeed, whereas focusing on a region’s strengths is less costly and more likely to produce a favorable return.  This is precisely what the West Virginia Community and Technical College System is doing with its sector-based approach to economic development.  Under the sector-based approach, you bring together people connected to a key regional industry with growth potential and figure out how higher education can provide it with a skilled workforce and help it innovate.  It is unfortunate that the state’s research universities are not playing a more significant role in these efforts.
• “At the end of the day,… a thriving regional economy benefits colleges and universities in innumerable ways.  Even so, it may require a journey of internal reform for a university to take some responsibility for generating that prosperity.”  If Marshall University wants to bring in top-notch researchers, Huntington must be the kind of community where a top-notch researcher would want to live.  This is why President Stephen Kopp, I suspect, has been an active participant in the Create Huntington initiative and has made “community and service” one of the four pillars of Marshall’s strategic plan.  What’s good for Huntington is good for Marshall University.

I have mixed feelings about Dr. Berdahl’s proposal.  On the one hand, I think every higher education institution should be free to compete for scarce research grant dollars from NSF, NIH and other organizations.  If there is any arena in which free market and merit principles should operate, it is in the fields of education and research.  On the other hand, I know that Congress has provided more and more institutions with earmarks for research without regard to merit and that West Virginia University and Marshall University both have struggled to come up with the modest amounts of matching funds required by West Virginia’s own Research Trust Fund program, which suggests that neither institution is ready to move into the upper echelons of American research universities any time soon.

*West Virginia University is listed in the Carnegie classification system as having “high,” rather than “very high,” research activity, which places it behind at least 96 other higher education institutions in terms of research activity.  Additionally, West Virginia University will not appear anywhere on the soon-to-be-released and very prestigious National Research Council rankings of graduate programs at over 222 higher education institutions because it didn’t even participate!  I challenge someone to review the list and attempt to identify ONE other state without a participating institution (HINT: There is one other state.) or ONE of West Virginia University’s peer institutions that did not participate.  More on this subject when the rankings are released.