UW-Madison continued its rise in the latest U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges rankings for 2026, moving up one spot this year to 12th among public colleges.
In the national rankings released Tuesday, UW-Madison also swung up by three places as 36th overall out of 438 universities across the country. UW-Madison previously has ranked higher and also lower — in the 2025 rankings the university was 39th overall and it was 35th overall for 2024.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison opened the new Computer, Data and Information Sciences (CDIS) building at the start of the fall semester, bringing together three of the campus’s fastest-growing majors under one roof and establishing a hub for research, education and outreach in technology.
Ruth, a beloved elephant at the Milwaukee County Zoo, died over the weekend. After her second fall this month, zookeepers made the difficult decision to euthanize her. Now, The University of Madison School of Veterinary Medicine is performing a necropsy.
Current University of Wisconsin Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin hosted former Chancellor Dr. Donna E. Shalala on Monday for a conversation on the future of higher education in Varsity Hall.
Shalala and Mnookin were introduced via remarks by Interim Provost John Zumbrunnen. Shalala and Mnookin took the stage for their conversation, which included questions directly from Mnookin as well as pre-submitted audience questions.
An 11-member committee has been appointed to help identify the next chancellor of UW-Stevens Point.
Four Republican legislators are reintroducing a bill that would protect free speech on Universities of Wisconsin campuses and penalize the schools if they prohibit it.
The bill allows students to sue the UW schools if their freedom is violated in any way.
Janet Parker, who leads World Beyond War’s Madison chapter, said the group’s main goal was to “abolish war” and push the University of Wisconsin System to “divest from all weapons manufacturing.”
The group’s march was part of a global movement created by World Beyond War, an international organization with chapters campaigning against issues like war profiteering, police militarization and starvation.
In October 1990, the Chicago Sun-Times came to the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus to see how students there felt about the new speech code, which could lead to suspension of students for “creating a hostile environment” by making remarks about another person’s sex, race, class, religion, or sexual orientation. Years later, the UW’s then-Chancellor Donna Shalala would tell The New Yorker that she pushed for the speech codes because the students wanted it.
But the Sun-Times headline told the truth: “Students cool to hostile-speech ban.” As board chair and former editor of The Badger Herald student newspaper, I was interviewed for the article and tried to make the point that the speech bans were self-defeating. I told the Sun-Times, “To shut off racial speech you’re actually feeding it. The whole point of a university is to educate the person to be a better person, and here’s the university saying, ‘Here’s a problem, we can’t handle it, send them [offending students] back to the farm.”
“We’re thinking about how we can distribute historical thinking skills as widely as possible across as many sectors of industry as possible,” said Matt Villeneuve, an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and member of the Doctoral Futures postdegree pathways subcommittee. “Because we believe that historical thinking skills are good for individuals and society. So why would we not want to deploy them as far and wide as possible?”
New season ticket sales have spiked from 151 in 2024-25 to currently 609 before this. That’s all while 93% of existing season ticket holders have renewed for 2025-26 — an increase from the previous season.
The success of this summer’s Morgan Wallen and Coldplay concerts suggests that the stage is set for the University of Wisconsin’s football stadium to continue serving as a venue for big-name acts.
The comeback is nearly three decades in the making. Before this summer, Camp Randall Stadium last held a major music concert in 1997: the year Princess Diana died, the first “Harry Potter” book was published and the WNBA debuted. On Oct. 6, The Rolling Stones thrilled more than 27,000 local fans at Camp Randall as part of their Bridges to Babylon Tour.
The UW-Madison Police Department on Wednesday cleared the scene after asking the public to avoid the area of Johnson Street and Wisconsin Avenue due to reports of a man with a knife in the vicinity.
The UW-Madison Police Department on Wednesday cleared the scene after asking the public to avoid the area of Johnson Street and Wisconsin Avenue due to reports of a man with a knife in the vicinity.
UW-Madison Police Department gave an all clear after sending an alert out for the report of a man with a knife Wednesday morning off campus.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Blk Pwr Coalition (BPC) honored Demartravion “Trey” Reed and Cory Zukatis, the two Mississippi men found dead hanging from trees in different parts of the state on Sept. 15, at a vigil on Library Mall Thursday.
UW Health is sharing advice for parents as this week marks Child Passenger Safety Week.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, car crashes are still a leading cause of death among kids. In 2023, UW Health reported more than a 1,000 kids were killed in crashes.
“If they could have been blinded to the study results and rate the quality, I would feel it was more compelling. I feel like these are just their opinions,” said Maureen Durkin, a population health sciences professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It’s a cycle. Embrace it.
I became a fan when the University of Wisconsin Badgers football team went 0-9-1 in 1967. The losses make the wins more special. UW can rise again, but we need to set realistic expectations and enjoy the bumpy journey.
Linda Gentes died September 6, 2025, unexpectedly, at home, as a result of a rapid infection.
In Richland Center, Linda was an outspoken advocate for the University of Wisconsin Richland Campus – acting as Director of Continuing Education from 1986 to 2004. During this time she earned her Master’s degree in Continuing and Vocational Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1999.
