Thought it could only happen in China :-) (zt)

University Investigates Whether Governor’s Daughter Earned Degree
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By IAN URBINA
Published: January 22, 2008
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — It started with a phone call from a newspaper reporter in October seeking to verify the academic credentials of Gov. Joe Manchin III’s daughter Heather Bresch. But in less than three months, the inquiry has mushroomed into a controversy that risks casting a shadow of cronyism over this state’s flagship university.

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West Virginia University, via Associated Press
Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, with Senators John D. Rockefeller IV, left, and Robert C. Byrd, in 2006. Mr. Manchin’s daughter Heather Bresch is facing scrutiny over a master’s degree from West Virginia University, left.
Officials at the college, West Virginia University, have been accused of rewriting records last fall to document that Ms. Bresch had earned an executive master of business administration degree in 1998. An investigation by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette concluded that she had completed only 22 of the required 48 credit hours.

The university has begun an investigation of its own into the matter.

Ms. Bresch, 38, works for Mylan Inc., the world’s third-largest generic drug company, which employs 2,000 people in Morgantown. The company’s chairman, Milan Puskar, is a major campaign contributor to Governor Manchin, a Democrat, and is the university’s largest donor, having given it $20 million in 2003. Ms. Bresch has insisted that she earned her degree, and university officials have blamed a failure to transfer records for nearly half of her course work to the appropriate office for the situation, as documents were moved to electronic format from paper. But so far, the university and Ms. Bresch have not produced copies of her trans, receipts or other proof of her having paid for course work, or documents from the courses where grades seemed to have been entered years after “incompletes” were given.

“This is really about the university’s credibility, and that affects the degrees we are trying to get,” said David Ryan, a senior and the opinion page editor for the student newspaper, The Daily Athenaeum. Mr. Ryan said he had received several letters a day from alumni, almost all of them saying the university should investigate the matter aggressively and as quickly as possible.

In a state with about 1.8 million residents, untangling the mess has been slowed by the tight web of personal ties between state political leaders and campus administrators and between the people involved in the controversy and those investigating it.

For example, the university’s president, Mike Garrison, is a high school classmate of Ms. Bresch’s and a longtime friend of the Manchin family. He served as chief of staff to former Gov. Bob Wise, a Democrat, and was a consultant and a lobbyist for Mylan. His connections, including business ties to members of the university board, led many critics to charge that the presidential search that began in 2006 had been rigged in his favor. The Faculty Senate took the rare step last April of voting no confidence in him, even before he was appointed.

University officials have called for any faculty members, graduates, administrators or students who know anything about the case to step forward. There may be reluctance, however, to speak out against the university or Mylan, for fear of being blackballed by two of the state’s largest employers.

“In West Virginia, there is a proverb that says that everything is political except politics, and that is personal,” said Conni Gratop Lewis, a retired lobbyist for nonprofit groups. “It’s a tiny state, with just two major universities, just one major law school and where many of us grow up in the same small towns or counties, so there ends up being just one degree of separation between people involved in business and politics and whatever else.”

On Jan. 14, members of the Faculty Senate tried to widen that separation by voting 46 to 34 to urge the removal of one member of the investigating committee. The senate had raised concerns about the independence of the investigation if that member, Bruce Flack, was included in the process because he is vice chancellor of academic affairs for the Higher Education Policy Commission, a state panel largely controlled by the governor. Mr. Flack resigned from the investigation the day after the vote.

The Faculty Senate also voted to urge that three people “independent of any governmental agency or interested party” be added to the panel investigating the university’s actions.

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