At first, West Virginia University officials said it was a simple record-keeping mix-up and that Mylan executive Heather Bresch definitely earned her M.B.A. degree in December 1998.

But in the weeks since a Dec. 21 story by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette raised questions about how the school went about retroactively granting the degree, officials have offered various, often contradictory, explanations of how they made the decision -- including acknowledging they lacked the records to show she finished the degree.

Just how much has changed in what the university originally described as a clear-cut case is evident from the conflicting statements made by Provost Gerald Lang, the university's chief academic officer.

On Dec. 14, Mr. Lang said there was no reason to pursue the matter further because errors had been appropriately corrected. A month later, he told WVU's student newspaper that the odds that Ms. Bresch did not earn the degree were 50-50.

For most students, the discrepancy over the degree would have been handled quietly and internally, and would not have garnered the national attention Ms. Bresch's case has. The interest in whether Mylan's chief operating officer earned a master's degree in business administration stems from who Ms. Bresch is. She is the daughter of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin; the No. 2 executive at the Cecil-based drug company whose chairman is WVU's largest benefactor; and a longtime friend and former business associate of WVU President Mike Garrison.

The controversy began with a routine call from the Post-Gazette to WVU to confirm Ms. Bresch's academic credentials following her October promotion to chief operating officer at Mylan. The newspaper originally was told Ms. Bresch did not complete her degree, but when the Post-Gazette contacted Ms. Bresch about the discrepancy, she insisted that she earned the degree in December 1998. She declined to provide a transcript or other documentation and has declined further comment.

Subsequent Post-Gazette research found WVU officials retroactively added six classes, including grades, to Ms. Bresch's transcript and changed two courses that were marked "incomplete" to show letter grades. Together, the revisions added 22 missing credits that were required to complete the 48-credit program. The newspaper's research indicated the classes were added without hard evidence that Ms. Bresch registered, paid or did the work for them.

In recent weeks, WVU officials have said they reconstructed Ms. Bresch's history at the school despite spotty records. Business school Dean R. Stephen Sears, who has declined repeated requests for interviews with the Post-Gazette, acknowledged this month in a lengthy television interview that Ms. Bresch's financial and academic records were "incomplete."

Without the records to show Ms. Bresch finished her degree, the decision to grant it was based on "conversations and so forth," Mr. Sears said on the "Decision Makers" show broadcast the weekend of Jan. 12 by four West Virginia stations.

"It is a case that is very incomplete at least with the data that we had. We had more questions than we had answers for," Mr. Sears said. "We made the best decision that we thought we could make."

His statements contrast with the certainty with which WVU spokeswoman Amy Neil spoke in October when the decision was made to retroactively grant Ms. Bresch the degree.

"We found all the pieces of the puzzle and were able to verify that all the class work was completed. She did all 48 hours," Ms. Neil told the Post-Gazette at the time, just a few days after the university initially said Ms. Bresch had not completed the degree.

Ms. Neil made the same statement when the Post-Gazette story appeared Dec. 21, telling the Charleston Daily Mail: "We have the records. We have all the transcripts."

Officials originally blamed the missing credits on the business school's failure to transfer record of nearly half of Ms. Bresch's course work to the registrar's office in 1998. Mr. Sears subsequently has said there were several other major snafus involving her records.

He contended, for example, that tuition payment records were missing because of multiple "slip-ups" with the office of student accounts. In addition, besides failing to report Ms. Bresch's grades to admissions and records over multiple semesters in 1998, the business school lost her files several years later as documents were converted from paper to an electronic format, Mr. Sears explained in the television interview.

"The records that weren't completed have now been lost," he said.

Both Mr. Lang and Mr. Sears have said the business school conducted an extensive examination of Ms. Bresch's case, lasting roughly two weeks, to determine whether to retroactively grant the degree. But e-mails obtained by the Post-Gazette under the Freedom of Information Act indicate they made their decision much more swiftly and with considerably less documentation than officials originally said existed.

The e-mail records show that top officials, including Mr. Lang and Mr. Garrison's chief of staff, Craig Walker, discussed Ms. Bresch's case Friday, Oct. 12, the day after admissions and records told the Post-Gazette she had not earned the degree.

On Monday morning, Oct. 15, Mr. Walker called a meeting with Mr. Lang and several other business school administrators. E-mails indicate the gathering was the only meeting Mr. Sears attended before making the decision to grant the degree.

Just hours after that meeting, the university issued a statement to the Post-Gazette saying Ms. Bresch had met all the requirements for an M.B.A. except for paying a $50 graduation fee, meaning she had never been granted a diploma.

"We confirmed she completed all the course work necessary to graduate but discovered that wasn't put on the record because the fee wasn't paid," Ms. Neil said at the time.

She did not explain how not paying a fee at the end of the program would affect transfer of grades and course work over multiple semesters, or why there had been no apparent problem with admissions and records receiving the first 26 credits worth of grades.

Amid public concerns of favoritism, Mr. Lang formed a three-person panel on Jan. 2 to investigate whether Ms. Bresch earned her degree. Last week, the university's faculty senate recommended removing one of those panelists, a top executive at the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission controlled by Gov. Manchin, and adding three people with no ties to the university or state government.

The policy commission official, Bruce Flack, subsequently resigned, and the senate executive committee today is expected to consider nominations for the outside panelists.

The "most qualified and impartial" will be presented to the full senate for a vote on Monday, faculty senate Chairman Steve Kite said.

Mr. Sears, in his television interview, said he was "fully supportive" of the panel.

"Maybe the panel can discover more information and do a more thorough job than we did," he said.