Mylan Exec’s Graduate Degree Is Disputed

This controversy has been boiling over since December when a Pittsburgh newspaper questioned the academic credentials of Heather Bresch, the drugmaker’s chief operating officer. West Virginia University officials awarded her an MBA retroactively last October, even though official university records showed she didn’t earn it. Bresch happens to be the daughter of West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin and a friend, former classmate and business associate of WVU president Mike Garrison.

Bresch maintained she received her degree in December 1998, but declined to provide a transcript or other documentation. 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. Since then, Mylan execs have refused to speak with Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporters, but Mike Puskar, the drugmaker’s chairman, who is a major benefactor of the governor and a $20 million contributor to WVU, did issue a statement today to the Associated Press to uphold her honor.

“I find it disheartening that a woman of Heather’s integrity, character and extraordinary intellect has been attacked as she has been over the past four months,” Puskar said. “It’s particularly troublesome because, if not for Heather, it’s likely we would not have an Executive MBA program at WVU…She certainly helped pioneer the program 12 years ago, and it has since benefited the university, virtually hundreds of students and many businesses.”

Meanwhile, WVU’s chief academic officer told the AP that many departments allow students to use work experience to meet graduation credit requirements, either as electives or for the core curriculum. And Bresch told the AP on Tuesday that an adviser had allowed her to substitute work experience for her final 10 credits in her 1998 executive master’s business administration degree.

Typically, individual work-experience arrangements are made, supervised and evaluated by faculty and field supervisors, and they may involve temporary placement with public or private organizations to help students develop professional competence, according to Provost Gerald Lang. How those deals are documented may vary from one department to another, WVU spokeswoman Amy Neil tells the AP.

Bresch, a 16-year employee of the generic drug maker, insists she was a normal, part-time graduate student from the spring of 1996 until the fall of 1998. Then she had a career-making job opportunity, a complex California lawsuit that kept her out of the classroom for the final semester, the AP writes. Bresch told the AP that program adviser Paul Speaker cleared the work-for-credit deal, and WVU told her that paper records from the program were destroyed a few years ago.

But Speaker, who could not discuss Bresch’s case specifically because of federal privacy laws, told the AP that he cannot recall any instance in the history of the EMBA program when work experience substituted for course work.

Bresch has significant political connections but denies using them to request a tinkering of her degree when its validity came into question. In addition to her other connections, she went to high school and college with WVU’s Garrison, who did some lobbying for Mylan in his previous political career, the AP writes. Bresch, who says she suggested creation of the EMBA program to former WVU President Neil Bucklew, acknowledged she was admitted during its second year without completing the entire application process, the AP reports.

Though she had intended to enroll, Bresch said work on her father’s first, unsuccessful campaign for governor kept her too busy to take the graduate school admission test. Speaker, however, told her she was welcome to enroll. Bresch said she assumed he had the authority to make the offer, and she accepted.

Lang said most graduate programs at WVU require either the graduate record examination (GRE) or Miller Analogies Test (MAT) scores from all applicants, and some require both. The EMBA’s Web page says the GMAT is required.