Money was flying everywhere at this week’s University of Wisconsin Board of Regents meeting.
The board gave new Madison Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin a $437,000 salary — about $100,000 more than outgoing chancellor John Wiley made this past year — and hiked UW System President Kevin Reilly’s annual paycheck by $73,000 to $414,593.
At the same meeting, the board approved raising tuition for most students in the system by 5.5 percent. It will now cost most in-state undergraduates $6,678 in tuition alone for the next school year.
While it would be easy to criticize the regents for raising salaries in the face of the nation’s and state’s economic downturn and balancing higher costs on the backs of the students, if fingers need to be pointed, they need to point directly at the State Capitol.