The West Virginia Legislature passed a right to work bill this past session. It is being contested in the courts but there is no good basis to have the legislation overturned.

That said, the coal industry is nearly dead and it is never coming back in any meaningful way. West Virginia's best coal reserves are gone. You can look at mining maps in certain parts of the state and see that nearly whole counties have old, spent mine shafts under them. Mountaintop removal mining, which is the only cost-effective way to get at most of the decent coal that is left, has been effectively exterminated by the Obama administration. But more importantly, the market for coal is difficult. When a coal-fired electric power generating plant is closed, that's a 50-year decision . . . because that's (at minimum) how long the natural gas-fired plant that necessarily replaced it will be online.

West Virginia's economic future hinges on Marcellus Shale gas production leading to a revitalization of the petrochemical industry in the Ohio and Kanawha Valleys. But that is no sure thing.

Lost tax revenue from declining coal production has put State and county governments in severe trouble. West Virginia government has actually been managed pretty well in the past 10-15 years from a fiscal standpoint, but there are few expenditures that can be easily cut and much less revenue expected in the coming years.

Will any of this impact WVU? A little. But what folks outside West Virginia don't really understand is that WVU is perhaps the greatest point of pride for the West Virginians who have jobs and make money and hold positions of power. It's where most of them went to school, it's where they send their kids to school, and the Mountaineers are the only game in town that matters (with apologies to the relatively handful of folks in the Huntington area who are fiercely loyal to Marshall). WVU is an economic engine for the north central part of the State. Housing already exists to grow the school to 40,000 students and beyond. So as bad as things look for West Virginia, I don't see anything changing for WVU anytime soon.
[Post edited by Tailgate Guru at 08/30/2016 1:07PM]