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Degree of fact: West Virginians deserve more on the Bresch case
Friday, August 29, 2008

While the Heather Bresch M.B.A. scandal claimed plenty of casualties at West Virginia University, there are still some questions left unanswered.

One of them is how did WVU officials falsify the academic records of the Mylan Inc. executive to award her a master's degree in business administration. The degree came nine years after she left the program with only 26 of 48 credits completed.

Fortunately, an investigative arm of the legislature wants to review documents that might reveal more details about how officials at the public university dealt with the phony degree given Ms. Bresch. She, of course, was not the typical WVU student -- daughter of the state's governor, friend and former colleague of the WVU president who later resigned and an executive at the company whose chairman is WVU's biggest benefactor.

The Commission on Special Investigations, along with the West Virginia Ethics Commission, are conducting their own probes into the case that became public after a Post-Gazette news story last December. An investigative panel of professors determined that the degree had been awarded improperly and WVU's president, provost, business school dean and others lost their jobs.

Ms. Bresch is still Mylan's chief operating officer, the post to which she was promoted last October. That's the same month she was awarded the degree, although the company no longer touts the M.B.A. on its Web site.

There is still plenty to learn about this case and West Virginians should hope that these two state agencies get to the bottom of it.

First published on August 29, 2008 at 12:00 am