PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — The West Virginia University at Parkersburg Board of Governors approved Wednesday a two-percent increase for all eligible employees.
According to the passed resolution, the estimated total cost of the increase will be $352,000.
University president Fletcher Lamkin said raises haven’t happened since 2014.
“We had a situation where we streamlined our fiscal operations (and) stabilized our enrollments,” he said. “The other steps were a lot of hard work that we did in our whole budgeting process to make sure that we were only spending money that we needed to spend.”
Lamkin said another part of the increase is the result of its “guided pathways to success” system of class scheduling, helping students better plan the classes needed to graduate.
“Through this, we have made substantial savings over our allocations of faculty,” he said. “We estimate that we saved about 200 sections year, which is a savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Lamkin said higher education leaders need to look at how to make institutions less dependent on appropriations, adding the state has not done any favors in protecting colleges and universities by cutting spending.
“Two-thirds of the jobs require some sort of higher education,” he said. “The state needs to realize that in order to at least have economic growth, it needs to support higher education.”
The raise would affect for faculty starting on Aug. 16 and other employees on Oct. 1.