Four more suits filed against MSU for accreditation issues

CHARLESTON – Four more lawsuits have been filed against Mountain State University for allegedly failing to inform students about accreditation issues with its nursing program.

Former university president Charles Polk and the Mountain State University Board of Trustees were also named as defendants in the suits.

Darla Blankenship, Robin Hubbard, Beverly Daniel and Tammy Shipley were students in MSU’s nursing program, according to four complaints filed Nov. 1 in Kanawha Circuit Court.

The students claim the defendants failed to keep them informed regarding the status of the nursing program’s accreditation.

The defendants “intentionally concealed how jeopardized the accreditations were, and, consequently, how jeopardized the BSN program had become,” according to the suits.

The students claim rather than disclose the issues of the program’s accreditation, the school actively concealed the severity of the program and continued to advise them and other students, both in writing and through verbal communication, that the program was stable.

In 2008, the NLNAC voted to place the program on warning and scheduled the next evaluation visit for spring 2010, according to the suits, and after the spring 2010 visit, the commission voted to deny continuing accreditation to the BSN program.

The students claim the defendants failed to inform them of the accreditation denial and encouraged them to continue paying for and participating in the program.

On Nov. 12, 2010, the West Virginia Board of Examiners for Registered Professional Nurses voted unanimously to require the program to cease and desist all admissions to all nursing programs/pathways or any other program representing progression toward a nursing degree for a minimum of 15 months, according to the suits.

The students claim the defendants breached their contract with them by failing to provide the education opportunity they had promised, and the defendants were unjustly enriched at the plaintiffs’ expense.

The students are seeking compensatory and punitive damages with pre- and post-judgment interest. They are being represented by William Druckman, Madonna Estep, John P. Fishwick Jr. and Monica L. Mroz.

The cases have been assigned to Circuit Judges Paul Zakaib Jr., Tod J. Kaufman and Louis H. Bloom.

In July, the Higher Learning Commission said it was withdrawing Mountain State’s accreditation. They listed “systemic breakdowns in leadership, program oversight, integrity issues and failing to provide accreditation information to students” as the reasons for the withdrawal.

On Aug. 1, the University of Charleston announced it was taking over Mountain State University’s campuses in Beckley and Martinsburg.

Fourteen lawsuits were filed in Jefferson Circuit Court on Aug. 6 by students who claim the university engaged in widespread criminal enterprise and racketeering activity.

The university only has a 2.5 percent graduation rate for students seeking bachelor’s degrees, which is the lowest graduation rate of any private school in the Chronicle of High Education’s analysis.

In 2009, Polk’s salary was $1,843,746, which was 3.5 percent of the university’s annual budget and was the highest percentage of a college budget received by any president of a private university that year, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Nearly 200 lawsuits have been filed in Kanawha County this year for allegedly failing to inform students about the program’s accreditation.

Kanawha Circuit Court case numbers: 12-C-2196, 12-C-2197, 12-C-2198, 12-C-2199