Millions of Americans who hold federal student loan debt are facing uncertainty after President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week in an effort to dismantle the Department of Education, which currently manages $1.6 trillion in student loans.
UW-Madison continues to make adjustments to its financial plans with ongoing uncertainty about federal funding cuts, stop work orders and inflationary impacts from tariffs.
UW-Eau Claire Chancellor Jim Schmidt, one of the Universities of Wisconsin’s longest-tenured leaders, will leave the university this summer to take a new role as the president of James Madison University in Virginia.
UW-Madison leaders are limiting the freedom vice chancellors and other officials have over their budgets following the discovery of thousands in “questionable” expenses by the former chief of the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
To help students engage in career wellness, a group of students from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and California State Polytechnic University, Pomona—supported by advisers from Cal Poly Pomona—created Tune In to Strive Out, which encourages students to channel their inner potential for future success and collective well-being.
The State Building Commission has deadlocked on recommendations for new capital spending in the upcoming budget Tuesday, ceding its authority once again to the Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee.
After Wisconsin Act 95, the Universities of Wisconsin started Direct Admit Wisconsin last August, allowing students to bypass the traditional application for all system schools except UW-Eau Claire, UW-La Crosse and UW-Madison.
Weighted grading, which rewards students for taking more challenging classes, could be implemented as early as next school year, school officials say, and would come in response to the UW system’s Direct Admit and Wisconsin Guarantee programs.
Director Samantha McCabe runs International Student Services at UW-Madison. She said international students are worried about a potential travel ban, their visas and federal funding uncertainty. She is concerned recent federal actions could ultimately shrink the international student population at UW-Madison.
The Social Security Administration axed the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC), a federally funded research program studying demographic trends and social security policy impact.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison said they are struggling to advance study of a potential new epilepsy treatment after the Trump administration’s pause on grant review meetings by the National Institutes of Health.
The University of Southern California and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are the latest universities to announce plans to trim their spending as they attempt to cope with increasing financial challenges stemming from the funding cutbacks and policy demands coming from the Trump administration.
Last Friday, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, Provost Charles Isbell Jr. and Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Rob Cramer advised academic administrators to exercise several budget controls for the remainder of fiscal year 2025, including reducing non-essential spending on travel, supplies, equipment, and events as well as reviewing all vacancies to determine if filling them is critical. Even more significant, all UW-Madison schools, colleges and administrative divisions were instructed to develop 5% and 10% budget reduction plans for the upcoming fiscal year.
Anne Morgan Giroux is pretty sure the cure for epilepsy ‒ or at least a long-term solution for millions ‒ is sitting in a university lab in Madison, Wisconsin. She and a team of researchers need just $3.3 million to push it across the finish line.
The problem: That $3.3 million solution is on indefinite hold as President Donald Trump and his administration slashes government spending. The money would have been awarded as grants from the National Institutes of Health to launch human trials. Epilepsy affects about 1% of U.S. adults, or around 3 million people.
Kimber Wilkerson, a professor of special education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said 504 Plans tend to be less formal than an IEP. They usually represent a collaboration between parents and school leaders to figure out what the student needs to be successful at school. For a student with ADHD, that might be extra time to take tests. For a student with Type 1 diabetes, it could be access to snacks during the day.
In reality, Wilkerson said, many teachers would be willing to extend those kinds of accommodations to students who needed them, even without documentation. But the advantage of a 504 Plan is that families don’t have to re-explain their situation to a new teacher every time the student advances to a new grade, she said. That’s especially important when students reach middle and high school, where they have several teachers throughout the day instead of just one.
Already DOGE has canceled many contracts at Social Security, just as it has at many other federal agencies. A DOGE-run website late last week listed $50.3 million in cost savings from these canceled agreements. That included funding for a University of Wisconsin at Madison study project to understand how to prevent impostor scams. Government impostor scams — most commonly pretending to be from the Social Security office — resulted in estimated losses of at least $577 million last year, often by conning seniors into sharing personal data, according to the agency’s IG office.
“When you cut resources like this, there’s always room to make things more efficient. But you also could make things worse,” said Cliff Robb, a University of Wisconsin professor who has studied impostor scams. “You could end up making fraud worse.”
Wisconsin’s private colleges are shifting course and cutting staff as they cater to in-demand industries in an effort to survive the same financial headwinds plaguing public universities.
Hillary Jones Henry was banking on the American government keeping its promise.
A native of Kenya, Jones Henry was accepted into the federally funded Fulbright Foreign Student program for the 2024-25 academic year, teaching Swahili at UW-Madison in exchange for a monthly stipend of $1,320 to help cover costs, like rent. But on Feb. 22, his scheduled payment didn’t arrive. He tried to donate blood and plasma as a quick way to make money but was denied due to the prevalence of malaria in Africa.
The Universities of Wisconsin System requested a variety of projects when the State Building Commission was considering allocation of its funds, according to the official State Building Commission’s agenda and requests statement. These included new electrical systems, demolition and replacement of old or outdated buildings along with fixing and adding parking lots around campus, according to the agenda and requests statement.
Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin secured the most earmarks before passage of the CR. She was poised to bring more than $192 million back to the state for projects including the construction of National Guard readiness centers in Wausau, Black River Falls and Wisconsin Rapids, as well as millions toward research efforts at University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-Milwaukee and Marquette University.
Prospective graduate students accepted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been receiving emails changing the terms of their offers amid uncertainty over federal funding for higher education.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee names four finalists for to become the next chancellor.
The University Committee met Monday with the Dean of the Graduate School Bill Karpus, Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and other University of Wisconsin leaders to discuss graduate admissions and federal funding cuts.
The University of Wisconsin was one of 60 schools that the U.S. Department of Education warned last Monday about a potential loss of federal funding if they fail to protect Jewish students.
UW-Madison Professor Sterling Johnson leads one of the world’s largest and longest-running studies of people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease. His team aims to diagnose the disease years before people develop symptoms and then identify ways to slow its progression.
“A key problem we are trying to solve is how we can diagnose the disease earlier, before people even develop symptoms,” Johnson said during a campus news conference. “Early diagnosis allows time for individuals and their families to take control of their situation, maintain good quality of life, take steps to protect brain health and learn about treatments.”
St. Norbert College is the latest Wisconsin campus to face financial challenges in the wake of declining enrollments.
Gov. Tony Evers visited the University of Wisconsin-Madison Thursday, touring Chadbourne Residence Hall and the Mosse Humanities Building to hear student concerns about the building and to highlight his 2025-27 Executive and Capital Budget investments.
UW-Madison School of Education professor Suzanne Eckes discusses the Trump administration reducing U.S. Department of Education staffing by nearly half and a multi-state lawsuit filed in response.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is reported to be under federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) for alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. UW-Madison spokesperson John Lucas denied receiving a complaint.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of over 45 universities the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is investigating.
Universities of Wisconsin employees affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers are calling on the UW Board of Regents to formally authorize chancellors in the system to meet with employees and the union to discuss pay and working conditions.
When one writes a weekly column for over 15 years, one notices patterns. The one I see today is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I sense an atmosphere of caution — and deep sadness — more pronounced than at any time in my decades observing and writing about the state’s flagship university.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of 45 universities the U.S. Department of Education is investigating for using what the department calls “race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs”.
Wisconsin farmer Andy Diercks sits on a red Memorial Union Terrace chair in the middle of a farm field, holding a potato in his left hand. “It’s amazing all the work that goes into growing this little guy,” he says to Amanda Gevens, UW-Madison chair of plant pathology, who sits across from him. “The research you’ve done over the past decades is critical to grow a good quality crop.”
Inside Higher Ed also contacted the two dozen institutions under investigation, and their responses varied. The University of Wisconsin at Madison and Carnegie Mellon University said they had yet to be formally notified of any complaint by the OCR and were awaiting more information to determine how to comply with an investigation.
A UW spokesperson also pointed to fallout in 2020 in the University of Alaska system when then-president Jim Johnsen stepped down after he emerged as the sole finalist to lead the University of Wisconsin system. Johnsen withdrew from the Wisconsin search after criticism that the process lacked transparency. He then resigned from the Alaska presidency mere weeks later.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s former chief diversity officer displayed a “significant lapse” in judgment and fiscal responsibility, according to a report, as state and federal lawmakers seek to root out diversity, equity and inclusion programs in education.
Committee members quizzed the leaders of several state agencies — including the Department of Public Instruction, the Department of Administration and the Department of Health Services — as well as the University of Wisconsin and several private companies.
Meyerhofer requested all documents related to the UW Board of Regents vote that day and the dismissal of the unnamed UW-Stevens Point faculty member.
For the second time in a week, the federal education department placed the University of Wisconsin-Madison on a warning list.
The U.S. Department of Education said Friday it had opened an investigation into UW-Madison and 44 other universities nationwide over alleged racial discrimination. The notifications came exactly a month after the department issued sweeping guidance threatening to pull funding from colleges that do not eliminate all considerations of race from policies and programs.
Celebrating 100 years of excellence at University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Nursing! With a growing nursing shortage, Badger nurses are stepping up—pursuing advanced degrees to educate, advocate, and transform healthcare for the future.
With a video camera and a $3,000 budget crowdsourced on Kickstarter, he visited two campuses that were in the process of shutting down last summer: UW-Milwaukee at Washington County, which was holding its final classes, and UW-Platteville Richland, where UW was vacating the campus after local officials spent a year fighting to keep it open.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s chief diversity officer made a series of poor financial decisions, including approving substantial salary increases and authorizing excessive travel spending, according to newly released records that shed light on the employee’s demotion earlier this year.
“Some of these surveys allow us to know if people are being successful in college. It tells us where those students are enrolled in college and where they came from. For example, COVID impacted everyone, but it had a disproportionate impact on specific regions in the U.S. and specific social and socioeconomic groups in the U.S.,” said Taylor Odle, an assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
“Post-COVID, states and regions have implemented a lot of interventions to help mitigate learning loss and accelerate learning for specific individuals. We’ll be able to know by comparing region to region or school to school whether or not those gaps increased or reduced in certain areas.”
This canceled grant — which funded research into retirement that informed federal policymaking — has impacted the work of more than 50 people at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, including the termination of five senior researchers, says Ghilarducci, who anticipates more job losses at the other centers.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of 60 universities across the nation that receiving notice Monday from the U.S. Department of Education for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students.
Employees and union leaders are raising concerns about the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s plans to shake up some jobs in the largest college on campus.
This summer, the university is set to move people who work in human resources, finance and research administration out of individual departments and into five “administrative regional teams” that serve all units within the College of Letters & Science.
The committee heard testimony from agencies with employees who telework, including the Department of Public Instruction and the Department of Safety and Professional Services, in addition to the University of Wisconsin System and private-sector companies.
Evers has broken records for vetoing Republican-sponsored bills, making it highly unlikely he would go along with anything significant the GOAT committee may recommend.
Still, as a committee of the Legislature, it was able to solicit testimony Tuesday from numerous agency heads in Evers’ administration at its first meeting Tuesday. University of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman and Bob Atwell, the founder of Nicolet National Bank, also testified.
“It appears that there are forces intent on destroying our existing vaccine enterprise,” says Dr. Jonathan Temte, a professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin who studies vaccine hesitancy. “Defunding research on vaccine hesitancy is the latest example of this effort.”
Trey Wenger, a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin, is funded by the NSF and found himself financially stretched when the agency suddenly halted postdoc stipends, only to be restored by a court order. “I missed a paycheck when rent was due, and remain concerned that my paycheck could be turned off at any time,” wrote Wenger, whose work in astronomy helps us better understand how galaxies form and evolve.
“This order is fairly vague and attempts to touch on multiple areas that an administration could potentially oppose,” said Taylor Odle, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies federal education policy.
UW-Madison is among 60 universities nationwide that received letters this week from President Donald Trump’s Department of Education warning of unspecified “potential enforcement action” if the administration determines they are not sufficiently combatting antisemitism on their campuses.
The legislation that would bar transgender women from playing University of Wisconsin System school sports received pushback from Democrats and community members.
Gov. Tony Evers is recommending the state take a wrecking ball to numerous aging state facilities, including the Green Bay Correctional Institution and UW-Madison’s Mosse Humanities building, as part of his $4.1 billion capital spending plan.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent out letters on Monday to 60 universities, including UW Madison, saying they are under investigation for Anti-Semitic Discrimination and Harassment.
Wisconsin’s largest public university is at risk of losing a portion of their federal funding if they fail to protect Jewish students.
UW-Madison has been warned of potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus, according to a letter sent from the U.S. Department of Education Monday.
Many faculty members spend their academic careers in pursuit of academic tenure, a lifelong guarantee of job security and a shield for academic freedom. But recently, the promise of tenure has proved tenuous for University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s College of General Studies (CGS) professors, 35 of whom were laid off in August.
Donna Friedsam is a researcher emerita who has been studying health care policy and reform for decades at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Friedsam told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that changes at the federal level could have significant ripple effects at home.
“Many people who are on Medicare, who are low-income, also duly rely on Medicaid to cover things that Medicare does not cover,” Friedsam said. “So, Medicaid is actually quite a wide-ranging program and reaches over a million Wisconsin residents who rely on it.”
The federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating the University of Wisconsin-Madison for antisemitism, according to a press release issued Monday.
UW is one of 60 institutions that received letters “warning them of potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus, including uninterrupted access to campus facilities and educational opportunities,” according to the release.
