BECKLEY, W.Va. — Officials with the former Mountain State University are shifting their attention to a lawsuit against an accrediting body following West Virginia University’s offer to buy the school’s Beckley campus.
Mountain State officials wanted to ensure the campus was in good hands before focusing on the lawsuit, trustee Elmer Coppoolse told The Register-Herald.
“It’s time to set the record straight,” he said.
Mountain State closed after the Higher Learning Commission withdrew the school’s primary accreditation in June 2012. The university sued the commission in May 2014, alleging that the accrediting body didn’t follow its policies, rules and practices when it revoked the accreditation.
“We have always believed that the loss of accreditation was completely unjust,” Coppoolse said. “We were never given due process, never given time to implement solutions that might have been desirable.”
In revoking the accreditation, the commission had cited the private university’s failure to correct major problems in leadership, program evaluations and campuswide governance.
Mountain State’s lawsuit, filed in federal court, said the commission’s decision was arbitrary and unreasonable, and its investigation was insufficient.
