As I near my final year at USC, I’ve had a lot to reflect on. Being a first-generation, low-income college student hasn’t made going to the fourth most expensive college in America a walk in the park. Yet, as much as I have to complain about — whether it’s the high cost of living or the excess amount of people in the Library for International & Public Affairs (by the way, please find someplace else to study, it was supposed to be my little secret) — I find a lot to be thankful for. On the other side of the nation, however, students at West Virginia University are less lucky.

Earlier this month, WVU proposed cuts in the face of a $45 million budget deficit. Specifically, the proposal would see West Virginia’s flagship university cut about 32 majors, or 9% of them, and shave off 7% of the total faculty working for the university. Over the weekend, WVU’s Board of Governors approved a slightly modified but equally horrendous version of its earlier proposal. 

I can’t imagine something like that happening here. My time at USC has allowed me to meet so many great people, do some cool internships, visit honky-tonks and jazz bars, meet the mayor of Los Angeles and Jo Koy, and so much more. I’ve been doing things 10-year-old me could only dream of. Besides the occasional hike in tuition or semi-frequent scandal, my personal life here at USC has been a trial run in social mobility. To see students at WVU experience the near opposite is harrowing.

A university going about conservative fiscal measures is nothing new, nor is it relatively foreign to this side of the nation. It’s happening near here, in the California State University system, where, just like WVU, dwindling enrollment as a result of coronavirus has cut off an important leg of revenue that these universities have really depended on lately. It is a national trend, but some schools are just a bit more insulated from these cuts than others.

While the solution to budget shortfalls in the CSU system has been raising tuition, WVU’s solution of cutting programs and staff could worsen their economic situation in the long term. 

More than that, some of the programs getting cut ought to ring the biggest alarm bells. Among such programs are the world language programs, which include French, German and Spanish. Unsurprisingly, language programs are the first to go at many universities facing fiscal fiascos. 

In reality, the modern workforce is not as monolingual and isolationist as the future these budget cuts may suggest. The modern world is more globalized and employers understand that, with 9 out of 10 United States employers saying they depend on employees who speak another language in addition to English.

Without these programs at WVU, students may seek options for college outside of West Virginia, further worsening the brain drain that the state has faced since the mid-1900s. Despite all the evidence that points toward the benefits of saving these programs, West Virginian lawmakers, who are actually sitting on a very comfortable $1.8 billion budget surplus that could save WVU two times over, are supportive of such cuts.

If West Virginia’s legislators weren’t ignorant enough, in his letter to WVU students and faculty early this July, President E. Gordon Gee talked of his vision of WVU. He spun really high tales of WVU as a future bastion of technology and cutting-edge medical advancements, as well as a place for people to study rich Appalachian culture. And yet, under the university’s proposed cuts announced one month later, the Appalachian studies minor’s fate was up in the air. Gee and company talk so highly of a great future for WVU, but their actions are contributing to the exact opposite. 

For a private university with a hefty endowment and relatively stable stream of donations and contributions, USC is well-equipped to weather fiscal fallout by digging into its returns, or paying its administrators a little less than usual. And while WVU lacks the privileges of a private university, similar life rafts are still within reach, like using West Virginia’s hefty budget surplus. 

Still, that is only possible if both university administration and state legislators could see the need to preserve what the university has now and move beyond automatically applying austerity measures. It is up to us to help universities, here, there and everywhere, realize that higher education shouldn’t be run like a business. 

Quynh Anh Nguyen is a senior writing about the implications of current Southern political events. Her column, “I Reckon,” runs every other Wednesday.