In June, the governor said he wanted to see an additional $856 million go to the Universities of Wisconsin. Evers said the next state spending plan is a “make-or-break budget for our UW campuses.”
Evers will ask the Legislature to approve an additional $856 million in funding for the University of Wisconsin System, the largest two-year increase in history.
The University of Wisconsin System has temporarily paused the release of an updated copyright policy that would broaden the amount of intellectual property the university can claim from academic staff after faculty criticism.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison became interested in this topic because they wanted to understand a puzzling contradiction. On one hand, many people express support for diversity and inclusion. On the other hand, discrimination and exclusion remain persistent problems in society. The researchers wondered if part of the problem might stem from inaccurate perceptions of what others believe.
The study, “Diversity and inclusion have greater support than most Americans think,” was authored by Naomi Isenberg and Markus Brauer.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents unanimously approved a compromise policy change Feb. 7 giving UW System President Jay Rothman more power to appoint top leaders while retaining some regent involvement.
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health Dean Robert Golden discusses impacts of a Trump administration action to shift National Institutes of Health rules for research funds.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is a key partner for USAID’s Feed the Future Innovation Lab, helping train agricultural researchers around the world and research new seeds. In the past decade, Feed the Future has reduced hunger and poverty by 20 to 25 percent in targeted areas, with over 6 million producers newly using better agricultural practices in 2023 alone.
Of course, these innovations not only support communities abroad, but can also be put to use right in UW-Madison’s backyard to make farmers more resilient to increasing hazards such as heatwaves and extreme precipitation.
A group of students who work on campus at Beloit College are encouraging their classmates and coworkers to sign on to a union effort. Administrators are hoping to channel the effort into a learning opportunity and expressing caution about changes to pay.
“We really rely on NIH funding,” Jon Audhya, a professor and associate dean at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health said. “That reduction would have a huge negative impact on the institution. The university really couldn’t fill the gap.”
American universities are spending far too much on consulting firms. Recent investigations reveal staggering numbers: $51 million at the University of Wisconsin, $4.7 million at the University of Florida, and similar seven- and eight-figure contracts across the nation.
Andrew Reschovsky, a professor emeritus of public affairs at UW-Madison, said sometimes it makes sense for a state agency to contract out services when it doesn’t have the staff or knowledge for the work. Without the outcome of cost-benefit analyses or other information, it is impossible to know when contracting out makes sense without querying each agency, he said.
“We really rely on NIH funding,” Jon Audhya, a professor and associate dean at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health said. “That reduction would have a huge negative impact on the institution. The university really couldn’t fill the gap.”
University of Wisconsin System Chief Information Officer Steven Hopper said Workday’s implementation will be smooth and will create a foundation for growth.
On Monday, higher education groups joined an association of public universities with schools in states that supported Trump in last year’s election to file their own legal challenge that described $65 million in losses for the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a 70 percent reduction in funding for the University of Florida.
These up-front losses generate much greater future value of nonmonetary as well as monetary kinds. Look at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Harvard University, et al. in Table 22 above. The sector spent nearly $28 billion of its own money generously subsidizing sponsors’ research, including by subsidizing the federal government itself.
Two Republicans who chair state legislative committees on energy and utilities say they want to bring more nuclear power online in Wisconsin in the coming years.
To start that effort, they introduced a resolution calling on the Legislature to publicly support nuclear power and fusion energy.
The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh is selling its previous Campus Center for Equity and Diversity building following the state legislature’s DEI reconstruction decision.
The Office of Children’s Mental Health released new recommendations this week for students, parents and colleges to improve mental health and sense of belonging on campus.
Last year, an analysis released by the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau found most state agencies and University of Wisconsin institutions allowed employees to work from home up to five days a week and one-third or less of workstations in state offices were being used during auditors’ visits.
Based on six visits to 15 agencies and University of Wisconsin System offices between July and August 2023, the highest percentage of workstations being used was 34.5% at the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance. The audit was released in December 2023.
“This executive order raises a lot of issues over who really controls public education,” said Suzanne Eckes, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor whose work focuses on K-12 legal issues and school policy. Public education has historically been a state and school board function, she said.
“Typically, the federal government isn’t saying, ‘You’re going to do this social studies curriculum, and you’re going to use this book, and everybody in the United States is going to learn about slavery or World War I or the American Revolution in this way,'” said Eckes, speaking from her perspective and not as a representative of the University of Wisconsin.
“It basically literally means we are stepping back in time decades, that we are now gonna look at data on CDs, they’re gonna be mailed out across the country instead of stored securely in an online data platform,” said Taylor Odle, an assistant professor of education policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies college access and success. “It’s gonna be a huge waste of my time and a huge waste of the department’s time to have to process all of these new applications.”
The $4.7 million in recently approved funds will go toward two projects, one at UW-Stevens Point and one at UW-Madison. At UW-Stevens Point, they’ll replace emergency generators which are “undersized to provide adequate capacity,” and at UW-Madison, they’ll replace electrical distribution equipment at the West Campus Electrical Substation owned by both UW-Madison and Madison Gas & Electric.
“Cutting the rate to 15% will destroy science in the United States,” says Jo Handelsman, who runs the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “This change will break our universities, our medical centers and the entire engine for scientific discovery.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison said the decision to cut National Institutes of Health funding, or NIH, will “significantly disrupt vital research activity and delay lifesaving discoveries and cures related to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and much more.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison put out a statement arguing the new indirect cost cap will “significantly disrupt vital research activity and daily life-saving discoveries.” It added that the move will also “have an inevitable impact on student opportunities to engage in research activities.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison, in a statement: “This proposed change to NIH funding – UW–Madison’s largest source of federal support – will significantly disrupt vital research activity and delay lifesaving discoveries and cures related to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and much more.
“In addition, these reductions will have an inevitable impact on student opportunities to engage in research activities, from undergraduates to Ph.D. and medical students. Medical innovation will be slowed, delaying the creation of new treatments, new technologies, and new health workers.”
Dr. Robert Golden, the dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said indirect costs aren’t just administrative tasks, or “waste,” but the physical structures and equipment needed to do “top tier” research.
“I’ve been at several public institutions, including the NIH early in my career, and never saw waste to a striking degree,” he said. The NIH’s change, Golden said, “will have a profound significant impact on everything,” including utility charges, building out the laboratories where scientific experiments are done and finding cures for patients.
Afederal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a Trump Administration cap on federally funded medical research that UW-Madison said Monday could cost the the university $65 million in already-pledged funds.
A federal judge last month blocked efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to halt the flow of billions of federal dollars. Wisconsin officials worried the freeze would have wide-ranging effects, including at the state’s flagship university.
Then over the weekend, the National Institutes of Health announced a “dramatic” cut in funding for some research expenses at UW-Madison and other institutions, Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and other university leaders said in a statement.
St. Norbert — a small liberal arts college in the Green Bay suburb of De Pere — is planning to eliminate about a dozen majors and to restructure a handful more as it contends with an anticipated $7 million budget gap for 2026.
The University of Wisconsin System has eliminated a mandatory search committee process for some of its senior leadership positions that critics say will reduce transparency.
The UW System is asking for roughly $855 million over two years from the state and urged support for that funding during a discussion with members of the Hoan Group, a private group of about 160 business and community members in the Milwaukee and Madison area.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the nation’s top research institutions, says National Institutes of Health funding cuts will “significantly disrupt vital research activity and delay lifesaving discoveries and cures” for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes and more.
Changes to federal funding directly impacts Wisconsin’s largest university. The National Institutes of Health is reducing the rate for its “indirect costs” grants to 15%, which goes into effect on February 10.
The UW Board of Regents unanimously approved a rare policy compromise Friday that grants Universities of Wisconsin presidents more appointment authority but also gives Regents a larger role in the process than current President Jay Rothman had requested.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents discussed fraud and legal risks based on an internal audit and passed resolutions for a new AI major and funds for maintenance at today’s meeting.
UW-Madison will experience significant disruptions to lifesaving research under the Trump administration’s new rules for federally funded medical research, officials said Saturday.
UW system Capital Planning Vice President Alex Roe told the UW Board of Regents that two projects are a particular concern: UW-Stout’s $138.9 million Heritage Hall project and the $96.3 million Cofrin Library at UW-Green Bay.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison recommended “reasonable caution” on federally funded hiring and expenditures which are “elective” Feb. 3 in the wake of uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s executive orders pausing financial assistance for federal grants and loans.
University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman and UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin emphasized the significant risks of President Donald Trump’s freeze on federal grants and loans at a UW Board of Regents meeting Thursday.
To provide rural students improved access to higher education, the College for Rural Wisconsin launched a program through UW-Madison about a year ago.
Public and private leaders in Milwaukee say increasing funding for the Universities of Wisconsin system will lead to more people living and working in the state.
Ian Robertson is excited construction will soon begin on a new engineering building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He wonders, though, what could have been possible if the facility had been built faster.
Leaders of the Wisconsin Technical College system present their budget requests for the next fiscal biennium, requesting for a roughly $60 million increase.
“We’ll never have a great state without a great university. We got to fund it, we got to support it,” said Thompson, who served as interim UW System President from 2020 to 2022. “I think what is currently being asked for is completely out of sync with what is available.”
During a Faculty Senate meeting that was streamed online on Monday, Jennifer L. Mnookin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, urged professors to “hold off” on optional expenses so the university could help ensure that “you’re making smart choices.”
“The transition has created for us an enormous amount of uncertainty, combined with fast-moving and changing information,” she said. “It’s generated some potentially quite significant threats to important aspects of our mission, as is true for our peer institutions nationally.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is the most selective university in Wisconsin, according to a recent analysis from The Business Journals.
The Jan. 17 report used data from the U.S. Department of Education to determine the most selective higher education institutions in the country. Analysts used a weighted formula — based on acceptance and matriculation rates — to determine each ranking.
There’s a significant problem with the federal government’s efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion in research, UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said Monday: the federal government has not defined what exactly it means.
Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, plans to reintroduce legislation from last session that will allow Universities of Wisconsin to begin classes on Sept. 1.
Nicholas Hillman, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and co-author of the report, believes it’s critical to understand students’ geographical contexts.
He said conversations about higher ed access often revolve around “informational problems”—whether students know about different college options and understand the college admissions process. But his previous research shows most students, even if well-informed, choose to stay close to home for college. That’s why he wanted to take a deeper look at where residents do or don’t have broad-access institutions within reach.
Provost Charles Isbell, who oversees all academic operations, and Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Rob Cramer offered guidance in a letter to UW-Madison vice chancellors and college deans.
A state senator and a lobbyist for faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison want to change when classes start each fall at Wisconsin’s state universities to make them consistent with K-12 schools.
A decline in births is reshaping Wisconsin’s higher education landscape, with many UW System schools facing enrollment challenges and financial strain.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Office of Student Financial aid announced Tuesday that the temporary pause of federal grants and loans will not apply to federal student financial aid.
The pause in federal funding is “significant and concerning” for UW-Madison, Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and other leaders said in a statement.
UW-Madison is encouraging most federally funded research to continue, outside of a “small number” of unspecified stop-work orders aimed at a handful of researchers, the statement said.
UW-Madison’s Office of University Relations created a working group to track and respond to the latest executive orders and congressional activity that affects higher education.
The group includes representatives from across campus, including strategic communication, the provost’s office, legal affairs, research, student affairs, human resources, the international division, enrollment management, campus police and others.
Former UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow, who was fired in December 2023 after university officials discovered he had been making pornographic videos with his wife, has sued the Universities of Wisconsin to get his faculty job back.
UW-Madison, along with hundreds of other universities, has research contracts with the federal government, especially in the areas of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense. UW-Madison health researchers get awards from its agencies, including the medical research powerhouse National Institutes of Health.
Former University of Wisconsin-La Crosse chancellor Joe Gow launched a lawsuit against the UW System seeking the reinstatement of his faculty position and compensatory damages.
Matthew Fencl, a professor of health and human performance at the campus and the Sport Administration Graduate Program Coordinator for UW-Platteville, took over as campus director at the beginning of the year. Former director Stephen Swallen returned to his full-time role as an associate chemistry professor at the Baraboo Sauk County campus.
