WVU Is Financially Stable After Its 2023 Cuts

In September 2023, West Virginia University's Board of Governors approved one of the most dramatic restructuring plans at an American public university in years. Twenty-eight programs were eliminated or merged. One hundred forty-three faculty members received layoff notices. The foreign language department was gutted. The creative writing program was closed.¹

At the time, university officials described it as unavoidable. The alternative — doing nothing — would have turned a $45 million shortfall into a $75 million crisis within a few years, they said, driven primarily by a decade-long enrollment decline that had cost the school roughly 5,000 students.¹

Two and a half years later, WVU's financial leaders told the Board of Governors in April 2026 that the institution is on stable footing.

What the Numbers Show Now

For fiscal year 2026, WVU is projecting an $18.1 million positive net position on an accrual basis — a significant swing from the deficit projections that triggered the cuts.²

Both S&P Global and Fitch Ratings reaffirmed WVU's bond ratings, citing a "strong" financial outlook. WVU President Michael Benson stated in a Board presentation: "We continue to operate on solid financial footing." He noted that the credit ratings will directly reduce the university's borrowing costs, saving millions of dollars in interest payments over time.²

The university also received $7.7 million in increased base state funding for the current fiscal year, along with $32 million in one-time funding for the WVU School of Medicine and $5 million for the School of Dentistry. WVU's Day of Giving raised $22.8 million from 11,202 donors.²

$18.1M

What This Tells Students at Other Universities

About one in four private nonprofit colleges in the U.S. are currently considered at financial risk. Dozens of public universities — including Portland State, the University of Toledo, and Jacksonville University — have announced program cuts, faculty reductions, or both in 2025 and 2026. If you are enrolled at a school in financial distress, you are probably wondering whether those cuts are a sign of impending closure or a stabilization effort.

WVU's case suggests that large public universities with significant enrollment bases can recover from even dramatic restructuring — but the timeline matters.

The WVU timeline, compressed:

• Pre-2023: Enrollment had declined by ~5,000 students over a decade. State funding had also shifted as a share of the budget. The university was running structural deficits.
• September 2023: Board approves program eliminations and 143 faculty layoffs.
• 2024: Enrollment stabilization efforts begin. State legislature provides incremental funding increases. S&P and Fitch affirm bond ratings in December 2024.
• April 2026: FY2026 financial plan projects $18.1 million positive net position. Board receives stable financial outlook report.²

That is approximately 30 months from crisis to stability. For a school of WVU's size (around 25,000 students), that is a relatively fast turnaround — but it required both the cuts and a reversal of the enrollment slide that caused them.

The key difference between a university that recovers and one that closes is usually enrollment trajectory. If a school's enrollment is still declining after cuts, the cuts bought time but did not fix the problem. Ask your school's admissions office for year-over-year enrollment numbers — that is the leading indicator of financial direction.

What It Cost

It is worth naming what the WVU recovery required. Students who had enrolled specifically in programs that were eliminated — including world languages, creative writing, and several social science concentrations — had their academic plans disrupted mid-degree. Some transferred. Some completed alternative programs. Others were able to finish through teach-out arrangements.¹

Faculty who lost positions had no contractual recourse beyond whatever union protections existed. Some had been at WVU for years.

The financial stability WVU reports in April 2026 does not undo that disruption. It simply confirms that the institution survived the restructuring and is no longer in acute financial crisis. That is a meaningful distinction for students currently enrolled who are asking: "Is my school going to close?"

How to Assess Your Own School's Risk

WVU's experience offers a framework for evaluating any university you are considering or currently attending. The questions worth asking are not abstract:

Enrollment trend: Is headcount growing, flat, or declining? A 5–10% decline over five years is a warning sign. A 20% decline, like the pattern that drove WVU's crisis, is serious.

Bond ratings: Schools with investment-grade bond ratings (BBB- or higher from S&P; Baa3 or higher from Moody's) have access to capital markets and are considered lower closure risk. Ratings downgrades are public — you can search for them.

Endowment size: Large endowments provide a financial buffer. A school with a substantial endowment can absorb enrollment declines that would cripple a less-capitalized peer.

Program cut pattern: If your school is eliminating smaller, low-enrollment programs to redirect resources, that is a restructuring signal — not necessarily a closure signal. If core professional programs or entire colleges are being eliminated, that is more concerning.

You can use our college planning checklist to evaluate schools before you commit, and our guide to building a college list explains how to weight financial stability alongside academic fit. If you're looking for schools where the financial picture is clearer, our list of safety schools with real academic quality includes institutions with stable enrollment and modest tuition.

The Enrollment Cliff Is Not Over

WVU stabilized. But the national conditions that drove its crisis — declining high school graduation rates, skepticism about college ROI, demographic shifts in the college-age population — have not reversed. The enrollment cliff is a long-term trend, not a one-time event.

What WVU demonstrates is that restructuring, when executed aggressively and early enough, can work. What the broader data on college closures shows is that many schools waited too long, and did too little, and closed anyway.

If you are choosing between a school that has already completed a painful restructuring and one that is still in financial decline without a clear plan, the WVU case suggests the restructured school may be the more stable option — even if the recent headlines about program cuts made it look alarming.

Footnotes

1. Mountain State Spotlight. (2023, September 15). WVU board approves cuts to degree programs, faculty layoffs. https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2023/09/15/wvu-board-cuts-degrees-layoffs/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (2026, April 18). WVU reports stable finances two years after program cuts, faculty layoffs. https://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2026/04/18/wvu-financial-report-2026/stories/202604170083 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴