BECKLEY, W.Va. -- Students and administrators at Mountain State University said Tuesday they were stunned after the Beckley-based school learned it was the first college in West Virginia history to have its primary accreditation revoked.

"We were very surprised by this action and disappointed by this action," said Richard Sours, interim president of Mountain State. "I had remained optimistic that we were satisfying the requirements of the Higher Learning Commission. They didn't think so."

On Tuesday, the Higher Learning Commission posted a letter on its website that said MSU had lost its primary accreditation with the regional monitoring agency after years of failing to correct major problems in leadership, program evaluations, and campus-wide governance.

The HLC's decision will take effect Aug. 27, but the full ramifications of that decision on students, the institution and the region remain unclear. MSU officials said they would appeal the decision.

Accreditation is a kind of third-party stamp of approval that ensures universities or programs are meeting a set of national standards. If a university loses its primary accreditation, any subsequent degrees conferred by the university are effectively worthless.

"The University has not conducted itself with the integrity expected of an accredited institution with regard to ensuring that its students have accurate and timely information about the status of their academic programs and consistent quality across all academic programs," said the HLC's letter.

"[The school] does not have the human and financial resources expected of an accredited institution and has not demonstrated that it can plan realistically for the future to anticipate and overcome institutional challenges."

The HLC letter went on to say that Mountain State "lacks effective governance and administration to provide appropriate oversight over all levels of the institution" and lacked the support and staff to create "an effective teaching and learning environment."

Jerry Ice, chairman of MSU's board of trustees, disputed the findings on Tuesday, saying MSU had made significant changes in recent months that had transformed the university.

"It is the board's intention to promptly appeal the decision," Ice said at a news conference at the school. "We expect to fight this decision and win."

Mountain State officials had hoped that firing the school's longtime president, Charles H. Polk, earlier this year would have gained them some leniency.

This week's decision means undergraduate and graduate students currently enrolled at MSU must finish out their classes through a university-devised teach-out plan, which MSU must submit by July 23. The specifics of that teach-out plan are still pending.

As of April, more than 3,000 students were enrolled at Mountain State.

Students scheduled to graduate before the Aug. 27 deadline will still graduate with diplomas from a technically accredited university, said John Hausman, spokesman for the Higher Learning Commission.

After that date, any classes or degrees will not be officially recognized as legitimate. School officials were scrambling Tuesday to understand exactly what the HLC's decision means - partly because losing accreditation is such a rare event.

MSU is the first higher education institution in West Virginia history to have its school-wide accreditation revoked, according to the state Higher Education Policy Commission.        

And even across the United States, universities almost never have problems serious enough to trigger school-wide accreditation failure.

Losing accreditation "is a very rare circumstance," said Hausman.

The Higher Learning Commission first placed MSU on "show cause" status in June 2011, citing the school for its top-down leadership, lack of long-term planning, failure to collaborate with faculty, failure to give information to students, and the loss of specialized accreditation for the nursing program.

The commission gave Mountain State one year to make big fixes at the school or risk losing its accreditation altogether. The HLC board met in Chicago last month to decide the school's fate.

MSU officials can appeal the commission's decision if they think it was "arbitrary, capricious, or not supported by substantial evidence." They have two weeks to file an appeal.

"Our appeal will be on what the university is today, not what the university was a year or more ago," said Ice. "In some cases, putting in something takes time to see results. [The HLC] is not giving the university enough time."

Hausman, of the HLC, said he doesn't know how many universities appeal after having their accreditation revoked or what the chances are of success.

"I don't have any sound statistics because this is very rare," he said.

The commission has been watching Mountain State for several years.

In 2008, commissioners told Mountain State officials that despite the university's strong financial position and rising student enrollment, "it is not clear how the University will continue to respond to future challenges and opportunities with no clearly defined process for updating the University's long-term plans; limited empirical evidence [transparency] guiding planning and budgeting ... no program review processes to determine and sustain academic quality and viability; and a lack of strong communication and collaboration in governance."

The 79-page report went on to say "long-term planning was remarked as 'not necessary' and 'pie in the sky' by some employees and board members," and expressed concerns that there were no mechanisms in place to get feedback on how to improve the university.

In 2010, a national agency revoked accreditation for MSU's nursing school. That prompted the West Virginia nursing board to place MSU's nursing program on provisional status, for major problems in leadership and failure to keep up-to-date student records.

The HLC took note of the problems in the nursing program, saying they were emblematic of larger breakdowns at the school.

Last December and January, members of the West Virginia nursing board again evaluated whether to withdraw MSU's nursing program's accreditation.

Throughout the accreditation problems, members of Mountain State's board of trustees said they didn't know how bad the issues in the nursing school were, but vowed to remedy the situation.

State officials, students and others questioned why the trustees had not stepped in before the school was on the brink of accreditation failure.

As the school's Board of Trustees pleaded with the nursing board to uphold the school's accreditation in January, nursing board members said MSU leaders were continuing to "manipulate facts and information ... in total disregard to the standards set by the state legislature in its legislative rules." They called school officials' actions "inexcusable and defenseless."

The West Virginia nursing board withdrew accreditation for the school of nursing in February and said the program must close by August.

The Board of Trustees fired longtime president Polk in January, just days after the nursing board's rebuke.

"We felt as a board that we had to change leadership," Ice said after Polk was fired. "We have come to a conclusion that we cannot wait any longer."

While at MSU, Polk was one of the highest-paid college presidents in the country, racking up millions in compensation.

In 2009, Polk's base salary was $371,269. He also received more than $1.4 million in other pay and more than $4,000 in nontaxable benefits, according to 2009 tax forms.

Polk's compensation ate up a sizable portion of MSU's overall budget -- about 3.5 percent in 2009, according to a report by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Most colleges only spent about 0.4 percent of their budgets on their presidents.

Polk also made liberal use of the university's two private planes, jetting around the country and making frequent stops on the university jet to his private home in North Carolina, although he said it was always for university business.

The Gazette has previously reported Polk made hundreds of flights to the Statesville Regional Airport in North Carolina while at MSU -- an airport about 20 minutes away from Polk's $457,000 house in Mooresville, N.C., according to Federal Aviation Administration records. Polk also owns another 12-acre piece of land in Mooresville, N.C., worth more than $101,000, according to housing records.

The Board of Trustees said firing Polk would usher in an era of increased transparency and shared governance. Many hoped that was enough to stave off MSU's accreditation collapse.

But Polk's influence may not have been erased, said Andrew Wheeler, chairman of MSU's Faculty Senate.

"The HLC cited issues of integrity," said Wheeler. "That was Polk. He misled the Board. He misled the faculty. He misled the students. He misled everyone and I think the HLC thought MSU misled them."

"We're trying to salvage what Polk destroyed," Wheeler said. "This place is drastically different now. But we don't know what's going to happen."

Reach Amy Julia Harris at amy.har...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-4814.