Leslie Creasey knew from the time she was a child she was suited for a job caring for people.
“I just knew that nursing would be perfect for me,” she said.
She knew a technical education could help her land the job she wanted as well as a chance to earn a higher salary, but she didn’t have the money to go to college. Being a financial burden to her family was also out of the question. In addition to having a lot of empathy for people, Creasey is proud of her independence.
This year, she graduated with a nursing degree and is already working as an ER nurse at Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Charleston thanks to WV Invests, a program that allowed her to finish her education at Bridge Valley Community and Technical College without taking on additional debt.
She is one of the 3,350 students who have completed a credential — a one-year certificate or higher — through the program since it began seven years ago.
In West Virginia, people with technical and college degrees earn more than those with a high school diploma, according to the Higher Education Policy Commission (HEPC).
And that is a real problem for the state, which ranks last in the nation for residents with post-high school educations. The Mountain State is also last in the nation for the number of people working or applying for jobs, with a rate of 54%. The national average is around 62%.
WV Invests was designed to provide eligible residents like Creasey with a pathway to earn an associate degree or technical certificate in a career field in which the state needed workers without paying tuition out of pocket.
But much work remains to be done when it comes to tracking whether the program’s goals — to train and maintain skilled workers to fill workforce gaps in West Virginia — are being met.
An investment in West Virginia’s future
The state’s consistently low rate of people working and applying for jobs prompted the legislature to declare it a human capital crisis in 2019.
“Improving the state’s workforce participation rates and the level of the workforce’s career education is critical to economic development and making West Virginia a more prosperous state,” lawmakers wrote in a law creating the WV Invests Act.
They appropriated more than $10 million for the program.
Residents of the state can attend any of the state’s nine community and technical colleges, file financial aid forms to get federal grants and scholarships, and the state will pick up the tab for any tuition or mandatory fees the other financial aid doesn’t cover. It is what is known as a last-dollar-in program.
As long as the program’s participants stay in West Virginia for two years after they are no longer enrolled, they don’t have to pay the money back.
Participating students are enrolled in education for nursing and health professions, business, economics, information technology, cyber security and criminal justice, among others.
“West Virginia needed to place greater value on community college, technical education and workforce credentials that lead directly to employment,” said Mitch Carmichael, who was Senate president and the lead sponsor of the bill in 2019.
“We called the program WV Invests because that is precisely what it represents—an investment in our people, our workforce and the economic future of our state.”
Carmichael said the program was to be an investment accompanied by students’ responsibility and accountability. The program requires that participants have lived in West Virginia for at least a year, completed a high school level education and completed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Once they are enrolled, students must show academic progress by maintaining a cumulative 2.0 grade point average, be in good standing on any federal student loans and complete at least two hours of unpaid community service each academic year while they receive WV Invests funds. They also must commit to living in West Virginia for at least two years after dropping below part-time enrollment, or they have to return the money.
Until this year, participants had to pass a drug test, but the legislature voted to suspend that requirement after program officials reported that fewer than one-half of 1% of applicants tested positive in the past two years of testing.
About one-in-10 students in the program has to return the money because they can’t verify that they are living in West Virginia after graduation, according to Brianna Warner, HEPC director of communications. But thousands have participated and graduated with associate and technical degrees, which is why officials with the program say it has met a measure of success.
Elizabeth Manuel is the interim president of Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College based in Logan County. Manuel said WV Invests grants have made college more accessible for recent high school graduates, working adults and nontraditional students.
In-state Southern students pay around $10,000 in tuition and fees for a two-year degree. According to HEPC data, 52 Southern students received WV Invests grants in the 2024-25 academic year.
In 2025-26, 839 students in the state completed a credential-level program and received WV Invests funding.
“We measure the success of this program based on every student enrolled, because upon completion that student will be filling a much-needed role in their community,” said Sarah Armstrong Tucker, chancellor of the WV Higher Education Policy Commission and Community & Technical College System.
The program’s effect on the workforce
But the effect of the program on the state’s workforce is unclear.
One of the goals was to get workers in high-demand fields. But the HEPC is only beginning to work out how to track data to show WV Invest’s effectiveness at doing that.
While student progress is easy to track, the jobs that graduates land are somewhat harder. Warner said state employment data shows the industry in which graduates are working, but it is hard to gauge if the graduates are working in the jobs they trained for.
A graduate may be working at a bank or a hospital, for example, but the data doesn’t show what they do there. Workforce WV, the state’s employment bureau, has begun collecting information on occupations, and Warner said HEPC looks forward to more refined data in that area.
Carmichael said no single program can solve every workforce challenge, and WV Invests must continue to be evaluated and adjusted as the needs of employers and students change.
“Nevertheless, it established an important promise: If a West Virginian is willing to work, study and prepare for an in-demand career, the state should help make that opportunity financially attainable,” Carmichael said.
The future of WV Invests
This year, the WV Invests grant served more than 1,500 students, the largest number since it began, according to the HEPC report in August.
The program is not the only one of its kind. Tennessee created the first last-dollar college tuition program in the country, Tennessee Promise, a dozen years ago. It tracks recipients of Tennessee Promise grants through multiple databases that report student enrollment, transfers and completion, payments and financial aid, and completion grants.
Tennessee’s college-going rate increased from more than 58% to 64% in the first year of the program and has maintained that momentum in subsequent years.
An independent study of Tennessee Promise program showed a 15% increase in earned associate degrees from community and technical colleges. Transfers into bachelor’s degree programs increased by 24% over the life of the program.
Photo by M.K. McFarland / Mountain State Spotlight
In West Virginia, enrollment in the program started around 1,400 and has fluctuated due to a number of variables, including the pandemic in 2021. But applications for the 2026-27 program have gone up, according to Briana Warner, HEPC communications director.
The legislature has budgeted $7 million for the program annually since its creation. But lawmakers cut funding by $2 million last year, saying WV Invests had enough reserves to maintain the existing services.
“I still have enough reserves to continue to make it work through this year, but in the next budget cycle, I will be asking for the restoration of that $2 million,” Tucker said. “As we highlight the success of WV Invests, we are requesting funding to continue the program.”
House Education Chair Joe Statler, R-Monongalia, said his committee is working with HEPC to increase funding in next year’s budget. Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s office said all state agency budgets are being reviewed, but WV Invests efforts have been supported in the past.
‘I’m not going anywhere’
Continued funding for WV Invests will be important for students like Will Adkins.
Although Adkins said he would have eventually gone to college, WV Invests allowed the George Washington High School alum to enroll in a program to become a paramedic while he was young. “I would have gone eventually, but it would have been five years before I could have saved up for it,” he said.
Most students who get the funding — 82% — are under the age of 24.
He has already completed the Advanced Emergency Medical Technician training at Bridge Valley Technical and Community College in South Charleston, and he works as an EMT for Kanawha County.
In December, Adkins will graduate with with an associate’s degree in paramedic science enabling him to offer advanced life support to patients.
WV Invests has given him more freedom to do the things he loves to do while he goes to college because he doesn’t have to work extra hours for tuition. Adkins coaches soccer at John Adams Middle School in Charleston.
He said he knows of others in his program who are married with children who would not have been able to go to school without WV Invests.
Going back to school has given him momentum to go on. Adkins plans to continue the health professions track and attend a four-year school to eventually become a doctor or a physician’s assistant. When he finishes, he wants to return to Charleston.
“I love it here. I don’t think any other place in the world looks like this. All you gotta do is stay in state for two years, and I’m not going anywhere,” Adkins said.
Tre Spencer contributed reporting for this story.
This reporting is part of a collaboration with the Institute for Nonprofit News‘ Rural News Network. Five nonprofit newsrooms were involved: Barn Raiser, Carolina Public Press, Mountain State Spotlight, Oklahoma Watch and Shasta Scout. The series was edited by veteran investigative editor Dee J. Hall, co-founder and former managing editor of Wisconsin Watch. Support from Ascendium Education Group made this project possible.