Controversy
Bresch, the daughter of West Virginia U.S. Senator and former West Virginia governor Joe Manchin, earned her undergraduate degree from West Virginia University. She was an MBA student at West Virginia University until 1998. In 2007, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Bresch claimed to have an MBA degree from West Virginia University, but that when asked the university disputed that. Soon after, the university awarded her an MBA despite her having completed only 26 of the required 48 credits. Following release of a report commissioned by the university (and written by a panel of faculty members from WVU and other universities), the university announced in April 2008 that it would rescind Bresch's degree, and WVU's provost announced his resignation from that administrative post (while remaining on the faculty). On June 6, 2008, WVU President Michael Garrison resigned in the wake of the scandal.
The university initially stated that it had awarded the degree after correcting a "records error." Bresch claimed in April 2008 that she had arranged with the WVU Business School to have her "work experience" substitute for the outstanding coursework - a claim reportedly denied by the then-head of the MBA program and rejected by the panel.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette characterized the panel's report as criticizing the university administration for having made "a 'seriously flawed' decision fraught with favoritism" in awarding Bresch the degree; Michael Garrison, WVU President at the time, was reported to be "a family friend and former business associate of Bresch" and a former consultant and lobbyist for Mylan.
According to the New York Times, Bresch said in a statement that she "continues to believe she did what was required to earn her degree." After WVU announced in February 2009 that it would not rescind other degrees where students' records contained irregularities, Bresch wrote to the university demanding an explanation for what differentiated her situation from the others. The panel investigating the situation had found that "the argument that other WVU students were similarly situated to Ms. Bresch...is not the case" and that some other students' records contained only "a handful of relatively minor administrative problems".
In the 2008 election campaign, Manchin challenger Russ Weeks attempted to exploit the Bresch affair by offering "University of Mojo" diplomas, implying that Manchin was implicated in the attempt to grant his daughter an unearned degree. The Manchin campaign maintained that the governor had not been involved in the affair.
Read more about this topic: Heather Bresch
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)