Does she or doesn’t she have a legitimate MBA? That’s the question being asked about Heather Bresch, the drugmaker’s chief operating officer. You may recall that questions were raised after West Virginia University officials awarded her an MBA retroactively last October, even though official university records showed she didn’t earn it, according to published reports. Bresch, however, happens to be the daughter of West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin and a friend, former classmate and business associate of WVU president Mike Garrison.

An investigative panel made up of two WVU professors and three professors from other universities has been looking into the matter since January and are expected to report their findings shortly. Now, though, Bresch has told WVU she will not allow full disclosure of the report, according to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which first broke the story last December. Bresch is telling officials they don’t have her permission to release to the public any info protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. “She wants to use FERPA to the fullest extent,” one source tells the paper. Mylan didn’t respond to Gazette requests for comment.

The five-member panel, convened by WVU Provost Gerald Lang in January, is expected to report its findings within days on whether Bresch legitimately earned her MBA. The report will first go to Lang, who has said he will then share it with the university’s faculty senate and board of governors. How much will be made public is unknown, the paper writes. The university formed the panel after first telling the paper that Bresch didn’t finish her degree. Days later, they reversed themselves, blaming a record-keeping error.

But some faculty say they are concerned that top administrators may try to hide the panel’s findings under the guise of privacy rules. “If (the report) is going through Lang, (WVU chief counsel Alex) Macia and the board of governors before the faculty senate, we have no guarantee we will have the heart of the panel’s report, so we will not necessarily know what we’re getting,” Sherm Riemenschneider, mathematics professor and faculty senate member, tells the paper. “If they say they can’t release the full report because of privacy laws, then the burden is on Ms. Bresch,” physiology professor Paul Brown tells the Gazette. “She has to waive it to let people look at the full report.”

FERPA generally acts to block outsiders from access to student records unless released by the family or the student. But an expert on student privacy rules tells the paper that the regs shouldn’t prevent the panel’s entire report from being shared with the full faculty senate. “The main issue here is for the faculty to be satisfied that nothing inappropriate occurred,” Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers in Washington, DC, tells the Gazette.

“It seems to me that every faculty member at this institution has a legitimate educational interest in the records of this individual,” he continues. “It may be entirely inappropriate for information from student records to be sent to the press or posted on the Web site, but it would be in complete compliance with FERPA, given the issue has implications of academic integrity, for the entire report to be made available at least to the faculty senate. They certainly have a direct educational interest and every right to review the case without consent.”

In the case of Ms. Bresch’s records, he adds he would encourage full public disclosure. “I can’t blame people for exercising their right [to privacy], but obviously, conclusions are drawn by people on that decision,” he tells the paper.

UPDATE: A Mylan spokesman writes us later this morning to say the drugmaker has no comment.

Earlier this month, Bresch broke months of public silence, claiming she earned an MBA in 1998 by arranging to use work experience to satisfy 10 credits worth of course work. The head of the MBA program at the time, finance professor Paul Speaker, has declined to talk specifically about Bresch, but has said that work-related credits were not a part of the curriculum. Bresch, whose boss, Mylan Chairman Milan Puskar is WVU’s biggest benefactor, has declined to provide a transcript or other documentation that she finished the degree.

Nassirian says federal privacy rules don’t apply to so-called “sole possession records,” which would include notes in files or private arrangements shared only between a professor and a student. In that case, public disclosure is the professor’s call, he adds.

Students can’t sue for damages if privacy rules are violated. But the U.S. Department of Education has the authority to cut off an institution’s federal funding. “That is such a draconian measure that no institution in the history of the law’s existence has been punished by a cutoff of funds,” Nassirian tells the paper.

Source: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette