Republican state lawmakers on Tuesday suspended a vote on funding for University of Wisconsin campuses, just hours after a top GOP leader promised to slash the college system’s budget as part of an ongoing fight over diversity and inclusion initiatives.
After hours of negotiations behind closed doors, Republicans on the Legislature’s budget committee put off any vote Tuesday on whether to slash the University of Wisconsin System’s budget by $32 million in an attempt to gut funding for diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programming.
Funding for the University of Wisconsin system is being held up by Republicans, who control the Legislature and who want to kill all spending on diversity, the Associated Press reported.
The last six-year term of former Gov. Scott Walker’s appointees expired in May. But the farmer-designated seat on the board has been empty, as the former seat holder, Viroqua-area farmer Paul Buhr, resigned in January to serve on the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board.
A new chief diversity officer hired by the University of Wisconsin System will start just weeks after Assembly Speaker Robin Vos called for eliminating DEI staff at the state’s 13 universities.
State Republicans have a long-standing tradition of supporting economic development in Wisconsin, but – bafflingly—they missed the boat recently when the powerful GOP-controlled state-budget-writing committee axed a proposal for a much-needed new engineering building on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
A bill that would renegotiate the Wisconsin-Minnesota tuition reciprocity agreement and allow University of Wisconsin System schools to retain more tuition dollars amid financial strain is again moving through the state legislature.
The University of Wisconsin System has hired a new chief diversity officer amid a Republican push to dismantle diversity programming on campuses and under threat of budget cuts.
Over the last several years, state workers have been leaving their jobs at higher rates and those jobs are remaining unfilled for longer than they typically do. The analysis shows that turnover and vacancy rates for state workers outside of the University of Wisconsin System rose to record levels in fiscal year 2022, with 16.4% of the 28,000 employees leaving their jobs, including 10.2% who left for voluntary reasons other than retirement.
In addition, 5,770 full-time positions, or 17.7% of the total authorized positions in state government outside of the UW System, were vacant as of June last year.
Around $100 million in private donations for a planned engineering building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are at risk after Republican lawmakers pulled the project from the state’s capital budget.
That has made things especially difficult for postdocs in regions with a high cost of living, which are often the places most likely to produce future faculty. A 2022 Nature study found just five doctorate-training institutes — UC Berkeley, Harvard, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Stanford — train an eighth of the nation’s faculty.
After a stinging defeat by the Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee, which last week rejected a new engineering building at UW-Madison, campus and University of Wisconsin System leaders vowed to bring the project to fruition.
They were freshmen in high school and college trying to figure out how the world worked, when suddenly the world stopped working.
COVID-19 was a generation-defining disaster. Schools shut down. Lives were lost. Learning was, too. College students traded their dorm rooms for doomscrolling, their socializing at parties for social distancing. High schoolers were reduced to suffocating squares on Zoom; college students dealt with professors they never met.
Dr. Crim is currently the consultant for the Equity, Inclusion and Employee Well-Being unit within the Office of Human Resources at UW-Madison after serving most recently as the Cabinet Secretary for the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services in the Gov. Evers administration.
GOP lawmakers rejected funding Thursday for the University of Wisconsin’s top priority, the replacement of an engineering building on its flagship Madison campus, approving allocations for about 60% of the state government and UW projects sought by Gov. Tony Evers.
The GOP-controlled Joint Finance Committee on Thursday also rejected Evers’ request to spend nearly $350 million to fund a new engineering building on UW-Madison’s campus, a top priority for the school.
“Today is certainly a sad day for UW-Madison, but the real tragedy is for the state of Wisconsin,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said. “This building would promote the state’s economic development. It would create significant workforce opportunities. It would propel innovation.”
Republicans’ proposed capital budget does not include the $347 million that Evers proposed to build a new engineering building on UW-Madison’s campus, a top priority for the university. A new building would replace the College of Engineering’s 83-year-old facility, which is currently in “poor and unsatisfactory condition,” adding over 1,000 engineering students per year.
Written by Kevin P. Reilly, president emeritus of the University of Wisconsin system.
Column authored by Katherine Cramer, professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Editor’s Note: This is the part of a series of three essays on free speech in the University of Wisconsin system. Look for other perspectives from Rep. Dave Murphy, chair of the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities, and former UW System President Kevin Reilly.
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of three essays on free speech in the University of Wisconsin system. Look for other perspectives coming this week from former UW System President Kevin Reilly and Katherine Cramer, a political science professor at UW-Madison.
Emma Vos spent much of her childhood feeding calves and milking cows on her family’s 120-herd dairy farm. Now, she’s a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying agriculture business management with plans to run the family farm in Maribel, just south of Green Bay, after graduation.
The president of the University of Wisconsin System warned Thursday that all but three of the four-year UW campuses will run at a deficit by the end of the 2023-2024 school year.
University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman is calling on lawmakers to provide more funding to the system.
Without increased state funding, the University of Wisconsin System is projected to reach a $60.1 million structural deficit by the end of 2023-24, according to figures released Thursday by UW System President Jay Rothman.
Most University of Wisconsin System schools will fall millions of dollars short of the money needed to maintain operations by the end of 2023-24 without additional state support, System President Jay Rothman warned Thursday.
Suri has also seen much of this happen before. In 2011, he worked in the history department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, when the state’s then-governor, the Republican Scott Walker, slashed colleges’ budgets and weakened tenure protections — revisions that have become models for conservative legislators today.
And the late Rebecca Blank served in various roles in the Obama administration, including as acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, before leading the University of Wisconsin at Madison for nearly a decade.
For example, when a safety breach occurred in 2019 at a University of Wisconsin-Madison lab experimenting with a dangerous and highly controversial lab-created H5N1 avian influenza virus, the university never told the public – or local and state public health officials.
As lawmakers consider the next round of spending on higher education in Wisconsin, new data shows per-pupil taxpayer funding for state technical colleges is more than twice as high as it is for state universities. At the same time, the University of Wisconsin System says 10 of its 13 universities have structural deficits ranging from millions to tens of millions of dollars.
The findings from surveys at two flagship public universities, The Ohio State University (OSU) and the University of Wisconsin (UW)–Madison, the former as part of the Campus Freedom Initiative™ of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, and the latter initiated by the University of Wisconsin System, suggest that the free exchange of ideas is limited on those campuses, too. At OSU, 50% of students reported self-censoring either occasionally, fairly often, or very often for fear of how other students, their professors, or their administration would respond.
Charles Lee Isbell Jr., dean of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has been named provost for the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Kristen Roman, police chief at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the director at large of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, said activism on her campus has been more prominent in the last three years she has been on the job than in her first three years.
As Republican state lawmakers consider limiting future University of Wisconsin System tuition increases for residents, UW officials say most campuses cannot meet ongoing expenses with current revenues.
The private university, based in Fayette, Iowa, about 100 miles west of Platteville, said declining enrollment and other headwinds challenging higher education institutions led to the decision.
The state’s Legislative Black Caucus pushed back against Republicans who are targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programming on University of Wisconsin System campuses.
Noted: Data from the Department of Children and Families’ 2022 Child Care Market Rate Survey showed that in Milwaukee County, the average annual child care cost for a 4-year-old is $12,142; for an infant, it’s $16,236.
Comparably, the annual tuition cost at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2022 to 2023 was $9,273.
The DNR and the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System would be required to reach an agreement to decrease the price of PFAS testing at the state lab of hygiene by at least 10% within two years.
Currently, the cost of a single PFAS test can range from about $350 to $500.
L.A. Times columnist: Back in 2015, Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker tried to burnish his culture warrior cred in advance of a bid for the presidency by targeting UW-Madison and other University of Wisconsin System campuses.
Walker cut the state university’s budget. His hand-picked UW Board of Regents gutted tenure protections for its faculty.
Coumbe Gitter, who got her degree in biochemistry with an environmental science minor, graduated in good company outside of her own family tree — Saturday’s ceremony was the largest commencement in UW-Madison history, with 7,826 degrees conferred, according to UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin.
The University of Wisconsin will no longer require diversity, equity and inclusion statements from job applicants, UW System President Jay Rothman announced Thursday.
The move comes after Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has threatened to cut state funding to Wisconsin’s public universities. Specifically, Vos has criticized DEI programming at UW as an attempt to “indoctrinate” students with taxpayer dollars.
The University of Wisconsin System will no longer ask job applicants to sign statements about their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on campuses in an effort to depoliticize the hiring process.
In an Assembly committee hearing focused on concerns about free speech on campuses, Rothman said diversity statements could be perceived as political or ask an applicant to agree with a particular viewpoint. He told chancellors in a Wednesday letter to eliminate the requirement of such statements by June 30.
More than 10,000 Madison-area college students will receive degrees this weekend over a two-day span starting Friday.
The University of Wisconsin System will eliminate questions on how prospective employees would advance diversity, equity and inclusion missions in an effort to de-politicize hiring as Republican lawmakers have claimed the universities suffer from a lack of conservative faculty.
University of Wisconsin—Madison tied for 40th in this 2022 ranking.
The fight over racial equity and free speech on Wisconsin college campuses is intensifying, mirroring a national battle as Republicans work to close campus diversity offices and demand students and faculty treat conservative speakers with respect.
Three new people, including a former Democratic Senate candidate, will join the Wisconsin Technical College System board and another will get a second term, Gov. Tony Evers announced Wednesday.
At Madison College’s new Extended Reality (XR) Center, students can toss on a headset and meet their teachers on the college’s virtual campus.
A symposium on diversity, equity and inclusion programming hosted by the Medical College of Wisconsin and featuring speakers including U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has been moved off campus due to “disruptive conditions,” campus officials said Tuesday.
The University of Wisconsin System will still launch its Wisconsin Tuition Promise this fall, using $13.8 million it has on hand to fund the program for low-income students.
Madison Ackley, at 18 years old, is on pace to become the youngest graduate the university has seen in the last 40 years, as well as the youngest female graduate ever, with a degree in accounting.
Three members of the Blk Pwr Coalition student group at UW-Madison offer perspective on a white student using racial slurs on video and how the university is responding to calls for accountability.
Howard Schweber, political professor at the university, said legally, there’s not much action the school can take.
“This is not a matter of the university choosing not to take disciplinary action – they simply cannot, without running afoul with the First Amendment,” said Schweber.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Interim Provost Eric Wilcots responds to outcry on campus over a viral video of a student saying racist slurs as the university continues to struggle with diversity.
The students snaked along the winding roads of Richland County on the last Friday in April searching for the name of a root vegetable somewhere in the vicinity. Answering the question incorrectly would hurt their score.
Noted: Pocan’s $24 million also covered 15 projects, including $3 million for a Dane County water filtration upgrade, $2 million to expand a Green County YMCA, and $3 million to build a new food pantry in Madison. It also includes a $2 million request for the University of Wisconsin-Madison to aid in PFAS contamination research.
In January, Kay LeClaire, a Wisconsin artist and activist accused of faking various Native American identities, resigned as the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s first-ever community leader in residence at the School of Human Ecology and the Center for Design and Material Culture.
Vos, R-Rochester, told conservative WISN-AM radio host Jay Weber that he’s open to cutting more funding, saying the nearly $14 million only reflected positions explicitly mentioning diversity, equity and inclusion, “not the funding that actually implements much of their left-wing agenda.”
UW-Madison students on Wednesday called for the expulsion of a student who posted a video to social media in which they used racial slurs. Thousands of students have since taken to the streets in Madison, Wisconsin to voice their concerns over the video and the university’s handling of it.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison campus erupted in protests this week over a student’s racist video. Meanwhile, the UW System is getting even more serious pressure from the state Legislature for perceived liberal bias.
