Several hundred UW-Madison students, faculty members and other employees braved sub-zero wind chills Saturday afternoon to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed $300 million cut in funding to the UW System over the next two years.
Talk about putting your best foot forward only to get it stomped on.
It’s hard to believe that Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin’s budget over the next two years would allow the school to maintain its quality. Walker would prohibit the university from raising tuition during that period, but instead give university officials more flexibility in managing contracting and construction projects.
MILWAUKEE — Earlier this month, Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin and potential Republican presidential candidate, unveiled a proposed budget that would cut $300 million of funds to the University of Wisconsin system and shift power over tuition from the Legislature to a new public authority controlled by appointed regents. The initial draft of Mr. Walker’s budget bill also proposed to rewrite the university’s 110-year-old mission statement, known as the Wisconsin Idea, deleting “the search for truth” and replacing it with language about meeting “the state’s work-force needs.”
STEVENS POINT — Faculty and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point are facing certain job eliminations if Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed cuts to the UW System — the largest in school history — are adopted by the Legislature, according to Chancellor Bernie Patterson.
University of Wisconsin students, faculty, and supporters rallied in Madison over the weekend. Hundreds braved bone chilling cold temperatures and high winds, to voice opposition to a state budget proposal that would slash $300 million in state funding for the system, while giving campuses more autonomy.
Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker, hasn’t announced a presidential run. But it’s a safe bet that higher education will come up often if he seeks the Republican nomination, as many presume.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank says a permanent tuition cap like the one being discussed by some Republicans could “actively harm” the university, especially if state funding continues to drop.
Wisconsin is in a fight to create good-paying jobs for the 21st century economy. Wisconsin’s trend of declining household incomes only will be offset if we can generate new, good-paying jobs and stop the exodus of college graduates to other states. The recent proposal to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin System’s budget, in the absence of a concrete plan to ensure that our standards of excellence remain intact, will strike a blow to a key source of potential economic growth and undercut a major opportunity to translate the system’s scientific research into new, high-growth companies and jobs.
It’s hard to believe that Governor Scott Walker’s proposal to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin’s budget over the next two years would allow the school to maintain its quality.
Perhaps saving students money by cutting courses the undergrad doesn’t want or need doesn’t fall in line with the “Wisconsin Idea” the state’s higher ed establishment has been so breathlessly defending in recent weeks.
Gov. Scott Walker said he would be open to extending his proposed tuition freeze for the University of Wisconsin System Thursday.
Between a late-night meeting with third-shift employees and daytime forums with faculty, staff and students, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank this week has been fielding questions ranging from how soon potential layoffs could happen to whether sick leave could be threatened under Gov. Scott Walkers proposed budget.
Gov. Scott Walkers administration has suspended merit raises and retention pay increases to help deal with a $283 million budget gap that must be plugged by the end of June.
The Republican leader of the State Assembly said he’s open to creating a permanent tuition cap at the University of Wisconsin System. But his Democratic counterpart said he fears the UW may not recover for decades if Gov. Scott Walker gets what he wants in this state budget.
Gary Walth’s workday on Wednesday started like it does many other days: before he even got to the office.
After Gov. Scott Walker proposed his 2015-17 biennial budget on Feb. 3, many questions arose as to what would happen with the University of Wisconsin System.
The Republican governor raised the prospect Thursday of limiting tuition increases at the state campuses to inflation, after his four-year freeze expires. Gov. Scott Walker raised the prospect Thursday of limiting tuition increases at University of Wisconsin schools to inflation after his proposed freeze expires in two years.
Eleven years after the state of Texas deregulated tuition at its public universities, soaring tuition bills have both university and state officials rethinking the more autonomy/less public money proposition.
On our latest “This Week,” Inside Higher Ed’s free news podcast, Justin Draeger of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, Kristin Conklin of HCM Strategists and Kim Cook of the National College Access Network discuss proposals to simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. In our other segment, Alan Knox of the University of Wisconsin at Madison and John Thelin of the University of Kentucky discuss the battle over Governor Scott Walker’s plans for the University of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Idea.
The “Stop the Cuts-Save UW” rally will be at noon Saturday on Library Mall, exactly four years after the first protest against Act 10, the budget repair bill that gutted public unions, was held on Valentine’s Day, 2011.
UW reliably ranks among the nation’s most prestigious institutions and develops students who shape the world. Now, expand that impact to all 26 campuses that make up UW System and the 180,000 students enrolled plus the million Wisconsinites who benefit from UW-Extension services. It is immeasurable the impact that accessible education has on our communities.
Recap of Thursday budget forum.
The suggestion might win over lawmakers concerned that more autonomy for the University of Wisconsin System would lead to runaway tuition increases, but it calls into question how much independence university officials would have under Walker’s 2015-17 budget proposal.
Vos told reporters he’s met with Blank and new UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone and is “sympathetic to the plight that they are expressing.” … Vos said if lawmakers do impose significant cuts, they need to ensure the universities are given the “maximum amount of flexibility” to absorb them. He also acknowledged that it would be difficult to implement such large reductions at the beginning of the fiscal year, July 1, because new students will have been accepted and classes will have been scheduled at that point.
University of Wisconsin faculty and academic staffers would have won the right to unionize and collectively bargain for wages, same as other public employees, in an early draft of Gov. Scott Walker’s 2015-17 state budget, a proposal that the UW System quickly moved to stop. It ultimately didn’t end up in Walker’s budget, which was released publicly last week.
MADISON — Gov. Scott Walker said Thursday that he would be open to extending a tuition freeze at the University of Wisconsin System beyond the next two years he’s currently proposing, offering the idea as yet another option to help sell his reorganization plan to a reluctant Legislature.
There is bipartisan concern, over the governor’s proposals for the University of Wisconsin System – especially for the impact it could have on smaller campuses. Assembly minority leader Peter Barca D-Kenosha said Thursday that he’s been meeting with chancellors of UW campuses, and has come away with serious concerns about potentially deep impacts, from Governor Scott Walker’s proposed $300 million dollars in cuts to the UW System over the next two years.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank told members of the campus community Thursday afternoon, “There are almost surely going to be layoffs in many units across the university. I don’t see how we avoid that. I am very sorry about that.”
I have numerous concerns regarding the governor’s budget plan, but felt it especially important to draw your immediate attention to the governor’s proposal to gut the University of Wisconsin system by slashing $300 million from its budget.
Gov. Scott Walker is open to giving the University of Wisconsin System more freedom sooner than he originally proposed to help it deal with a $300 million budget cut, his spokeswoman said Wednesday, opening another potential avenue for negotiations over the plan that’s drawn bipartisan opposition.
He also says he’s open to a long-term cap on UW tuition during a conference call with local reporters from London.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank urged Cross to include Darrell Bazzell, UW-Madison’s chief financial officer who’s experienced and respected at the state Capitol, on the System’s negotiating team. Cross said Tuesday that he heeded Blank’s suggestion, agreeing that Bazzell “has a good financial mind.”
We need a free-thinking University of Wisconsin now more than ever. What transpires in the next few months between our state Capitol and UW, just 2,000 human paces apart, may determine our “human condition” the next 2,000 years.
Dear Editor: Why would anyone want to destroy a $15 billion economic engine for the state? That is an absolutely great return on a $1.2 billion investment as a state we make.
Walker was also asked by Chatham House moderator, Justin Webb of the BBC, why his budget rewrote the UW’s mission statement to delete what’s known as the Wisconsin Idea. “Well how did you get in this mess though about changing its sort of — its stated purpose?” Webb asked. “I don’t want to get into too much detail and sort of bore people who don’t know a lot about the University of Wisconsin and I certainly don’t, but you’ve fiddled with something that a lot of people felt very strongly about. Do you regret it?”
Walker was asked about that prospect at the Chatham House think tank in London and floated the idea of permanent caps on tuition. “I think there’s some lawmakers in the state Legislature that want to put in the statutes — I’d be open to that — to permanently putting in place some sort of a cap on tuition,” said Walker.
The state’s biennial budget may not be finalized until May or June, but layoffs as a result of Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed $300 million cut to the University of Wisconsin System could hit UW-Madison as soon as April, Chancellor Rebecca Blank announced Wednesday.
Dear Editor: Underemployed graduates are sick of paying so much tax money to the same University of Wisconsin System that did them no favors in the labor market. Anecdotes of graduate success adorn university websites and press releases, whereas anecdotes of failure are ignored.
The blanket exemption in Walker’s budget from open records laws for UW researchers could lead to abuse and public distrust.
It’s hard to believe that Gov. Scott Walkers proposal to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin System’s budget over the next two years would allow the system to maintain its quality. Walker would prohibit the university system from raising tuition during that period, but instead give university officials more flexibility in managing contracting and construction projects.
After seeing tuition skyrocket after the public university system was given more autonomy, leaders are looking for a different strategy.
New today from PolitiFact Wisconsin: With Gov. Scott Walker’s 2015-17 budget introduced, we turn to the Walk-O-Meter for an early look at several education-related promises from the 2014 campaign, including ones on private-school vouchers, Common Core standards and college tuition freezes for tech schools and the UW System.
While Gov. Scott Walker is on a trade mission in London, his administration threw a curveball at University of Wisconsin System leaders upset by $300 million in proposed state budget cuts over the next two years.
The Wisconsin State Journal Editorial Board captured the prevailing opinion last weekend when it called the jaw-dropping $300 million cut to the University of Wisconsin “inexplicable.” Unfortunately, the board is wrong. There is a plausible vision behind what Gov. Scott Walker is trying to do, which makes his proposal much more dangerous than a simple misunderstanding of university operations.
It’s not a done deal that the University of Wisconsin System will have to find $300 million in cuts over the next two years if Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget stands in the Legislature.
All right, listen: I am a professional editor, and I am here to help.
Pennsylvania resident Amy Shao enrolled at UCLA last year knowing that she would pay a steep $23,000 more for tuition than her classmates who grew up in California. But with a lot of help from her parents, large loans and some federal grants, she has managed to pay her UC bills.
It’s hard to believe that Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin’s budget over the next two years would allow the school to maintain its quality. Walker would prohibit the university from raising tuition during that period, but instead give university officials more flexibility in managing contracting and construction projects.
[Note: this column also appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal here.]
Last Wednesday, Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker released a biennium budget plan that had a strange twist nestled inside. This line item didn’t have much, if anything, to do with how he intended to spend the state’s money; it had no numbers, dollar signs, nor provisos. It did, however, deal ever-so-vaguely with Wisconsin’s economy—at least, what Walker envisioned it would look like down the line and how higher education would make that happen.
Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed restructuring of the University of Wisconsin promises to send it down the path of a public university “buildings race,” a competition for students wealthy enough to pay deregulated tuition, write UW-Madison graduate students Lenora Hanson and Elsa Noterman.
Huebsch told reporters Tuesday the error is something that would have been found and corrected in the errata document that is compiled after the publication of every two-year budget.
Few things in the state are as revered as the “UW,” a fact Walker collided with last week when he proposed cutting $300 million from the university system’s budget and removing the century-old philosophical underpinning of the school’s mission statement.
A top official in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration defended the Republican governor’s budget proposal to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin System on Tuesday, saying that the System would soon have autonomy to deal with the funding reductions.
I am writing to thank you for your commitment to preserving the excellence and integrity of the University of Wisconsin System. As a native Wisconsinite, I have always felt tremendous pride that our humble, decent state has created and sustained one of the world’s premier institutions of higher learning and a state system that is the envy of the rest of the nation.
It was no surprise that when Gov. Scott Walker unveiled his proposed two-year budget last week he included massive cuts to public education.
UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stout have no plans to follow UW-Madison’s lead and petition its alumni, parents and students to write to legislators and announce their oppositions to Gov. Scott Walker’s budget cuts.
Noted: Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin and a likely presidential candidate, signaled his membership in this crowd when he recently proposed a 13 percent cut in state support for the University of Wisconsin. According to several reports, he simultaneously toyed with changing the language of the university’s mission statement so that references to the “search for truth” and the struggle to “improve the human condition” would be replaced by an expressed concern for “the state’s work force needs.”
One observer says presidential hopefuls might raise the issue, thinking it could hurt Gov. Walker in polls. Another stunned that Wisconsin is talking cuts.
Gov. Walker clearly stepped in it when his administration attempted to quietly slip into the budget substantive statutory language changes to what is known as the “Wisconsin Idea.”
