As most University of Wisconsin System campuses grapple with consistent enrollment declines, some have increasingly relied on out-of-state students to fill the gap. That’s brought in more tuition revenue along with some concerns about limited access for state residents.
On the evening of July 12, 1893, in the hall of a massive new Beaux-Arts building that would soon house the Art Institute of Chicago, a young professor named Frederick Jackson Turner rose to present what would become the most influential essay in the study of U.S. history.
It was getting late. The lecture hall was stifling from a day of blazing sun, which had tormented the throngs visiting the nearby Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, a carnival of never-before-seen wonders, like a fully illuminated electric city and George Ferris’ 264-foot-tall rotating observation wheel. Many of the hundred or so historians attending the conference, a meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA), were dazed and dusty from an afternoon spent watching Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show at a stadium near the fairground’s gates. They had already sat through three other speeches. Some may have been dozing off as the thin, 31-year-old associate professor from the University of Wisconsin in nearby Madison began his remarks.
Noted: I was interviewed for a Forbes article with the title “A Computer Can Now Write Your College Essay—Maybe Better Than You Can.” Forbes fed ChatGPT two college essay prompts, one the 650-word Common Application prompt—“Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story”—and the other the “Why Wisconsin?” essay from the University of Wisconsin at Madison supplement. According to the article, each essay took ChatGPT less than 10 minutes to complete. That is both far less time than we hope students would spend composing essays and far more time than most admissions officers spend reading essays.
Wisconsin will join the growing list of states to ban the use of the popular social media site TikTok on all state-issued devices over cybersecurity concerns.
Gov. Tony Evers said Friday he would issue an executive order by early next week. As of Friday, it wasn’t immediately clear what the executive order would include or if the University of Wisconsin System would have to abide by the TikTok ban
Noted: Soaring prices for cattle, land, and everything else, have made it difficult for someone to get started in dairy farming.
And soon there will be one fewer educational resource available as University of Wisconsin-Madison shuts down its School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers, which has graduated around 600 budding farmers since the 1990s.
The non-degree program has offered instruction in what’s called “grazing,” a type of dairy farming where cows graze on pastures for most of their food rather than consuming a diet of grain and spending most of their time indoors. In addition to classroom instruction, the program has offered on-farm internships, business planning assistance and mentoring.
We have multiple attributes valuable to higher education. The campus is located in a beautiful environment that supports the Wisconsin Idea, exemplifying how all colleges could be revived and offer what the regents want: affordability and accessibility.
Gov. Tony Evers offered insight into the upcoming budget process and project initiatives to look forward to in 2023.
Hillel International has gotten into the fight against antisemitism in the University of Wisconsin system, enrolling administrators in a free educational program and presenting to the UW System Board of Regents.
It’s not clear if there has been a speaker before at a board of regents, on antisemitism, at a large public university anywhere. If so, it’s likely a rarity.
“We were pleased to provide Hillel the opportunity to address the board,” said Mark Pitsch, spokesman for the UW-System. “It’s critical we identify issues so we can educate and sensitize our university communities to these issues.”
Four University of Wisconsin System universities misspent a total of $239,000 in federal COVID-19 relief money, directing the cash to consultants, online maps and student entertainment, according to the Legislative Audit Bureau.
System administrators dispute some of the findings, however.
The report by the Legislature’s nonpartisan audit bureau found UW-La Crosse, UW-Superior, UW-Platteville and UW-Stevens Point all misspent federal relief funds in the 2021-22 fiscal year.
University of Wisconsin System schools have been asked to consult a central calendar and minimize conflicts with major religious holidays, under a new policy adopted in the wake of a conflict between Rosh Hashanah and the first day of school.
The new University of Wisconsin System policy, approved Nov. 9, 2022, comes after two years of discussion between Jewish groups and university officials.
UW-Madison has its own slate of issues. There, a growing population is pitted against on- and off-campus housing availability. I wrote about the tactics used to clear returning students out of the dorms to make room for freshmen, and the frenzy that ensued as students put their lives on hold to secure housing for next fall.
In 2018, students called on UW-Madison to remove the name of Fredric March – a UW alum and one of Hollywood’s most celebrated stars in the 1930s and 40s – from a theater in Memorial Union.
That came after a UW-Madison study, commissioned in the wake of the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, examined the history of student organizations in the 1920s.
The University of Wisconsin System spent nearly $240,000 of federal COVID-19 relief money on expenses not allowed under federal criteria, a new nonpartisan state audit found.
The $239,200 in misspent funds identified by the Legislative Audit Bureau on Dec. 22 represent less than 1% of the $564 million that UW System received in federal money to help navigate through the pandemic.
The past 12 months in higher education have been filled with attention-grabbing headlines and news from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Those stories included protests, a professor winning the MacArthur “genius” grant and a mysterious case of toy soldiers appearing on campus.
John Karl Scholz, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, plans to step down and return to the faculty at the end of the 2022-23 academic year.
Linda Gentes ordered “Save our campus” buttons this fall to hand out around the University of Wisconsin campus in Richland Center. She was worried about her former employer and its future. With just 60 degree-seeking students enrolled this semester, she and others felt the need for a public awareness campaign to do something, anything, to turn the tide.
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point unveiled a $10 million gift Thursday, the largest donation in the school’s history, which will help the institution elevate the profile of its business school and enroll more students.
An expert at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls hopes a new focus on humane handling of animals at slaughter facilities will help the meat industry build a more sustainable future.
UW-River Falls launched the new Humane Handling Institute at the end of October through funding from the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection’s Meat Talent Development program. Starting next fall, the program plans to offer five different 2.5-day workshops designed primarily for people already working in the meat industry. The topics focus on everything from the safe transport of animals to the operation and maintenance of equipment.
Noted: Less than three-percent of all current Wisconsin law students are Black women. According to 2022 numbers, there were 17 Black women enrolled at Marquette Law School (out of 594 total students.) There were 16 (out of 757 students) at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
A statue honoring Vel Phillips, the first Black woman to graduate from University of Wisconsin Law School in 1951, is currently under construction for the corner of West Main and South Carroll at the Wisconsin State Capitol (across from the Park Hotel.) Vel broke the state’s color barrier in 1971, when she was named to the Milwaukee County bench as Wisconsin’s first Black female judge. She was also the first woman elected to the Common Council of Milwaukee (in 1956) and the first African American elected Secretary of State in 1978.
Mabel Watson Raimey became the first Black woman to earn a Bachelor’s degree from UW-Madison in 1918, but was fired from her teaching job after her employer found out she was Black (she had white ancestors, so people often assumed she was, too). Mabel then enrolled in Marquette Law School, where she was the first Black woman to attend, and later, the state’s first Black female attorney.
Aaron Bird Bear, UW-Madison’s tribal relations director, is retiring. He joins us to reflect on his 22 years on campus in that role and others.
As opioid deaths surge in Wisconsin, a growing number of universities are making the overdose reversal drug naloxone publicly available in dormitories and other campus buildings.
This fall, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, UW-La Crosse, UW-Eau Claire and UW-Parkside installed opioid overdose rescue kits called “Nalox-ZONE” boxes aimed at preventing opioid overdose deaths. They join UW-Oshkosh, which installed the boxes in late 2021.
Students and faculty point to other issues that they say started soon after regionalization and restructuring; this is when UW-Platteville acquired the campus in 2018 and several administration positions at UW-Richland were either eliminated or outsourced. It’s also the same time period that enrollment began to decline.
University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman recently contributed to the coming demise of Richland Center. He has effectively closed a two-year campus that has been in Richland Center for over 50 years. It has been a cultural hub, a financial asset and a source of great pride.
Chancellor Mnookin’s pay raised to $765,000.
Dear Editor: Jay Rothman, president of the UW Board of Regents, recently contributed to the coming demise of Richland Center. How? He has effectively closed a two-year campus that has been a mainstay in Richland Center for over 50 years. It has been a cultural hub, a financial asset, a source of great pride.
Noted: Just this month, the University of Wisconsin-Madison broke ground on a new on-campus housing facility that will contain 142 units with a total capacity of 536 residents in rooms ranging from one to five beds.
By this time next fall, the University of Wisconsin System’s smallest campus will cease to exist in its current form.
In-person degree programs at UW-Platteville Richland will end July 1. The 60 students enrolled this fall can transfer to another campus or end their academic pursuits. The two dozen employees who still work there might have a job elsewhere within UW, but there’s been no assurances offered.
New University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman was confronted Thursday with the real human cost of his decision to end in-person degree programs at the Richland Center campus.
About a dozen students, or roughly 20% of the 60-person student body at UW-Platteville Richland, delivered a petition to Rothman at the UW Board of Regents meeting that was signed by nearly 1,400 individuals pleading for the campus to be saved.
The UW Board of Regents on Friday handed out 2% raises to nearly all University of Wisconsin System chancellors, which is in line with 2% salary increases taking effect for all UW employees at the start of 2023.
Students at UW-Platteville’s Richland Center campus and community leaders on Thursday petitioned University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman to reverse his decision to end in-person instruction at the campus.
Ahead of a Thursday Board of Regents meeting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 11 students from UW-Platteville Richland Center handed a petition to UW System President Jay Rothman in an effort to save their campus.
The University of Wisconsin System’s budget request also includes proposed funding for staff pay increases, diversity efforts, Title IX compliance, sustainability and student mental health programs.
The WPF analysis also noted that funding budget requests from the UW System and the Wisconsin Technical College System would cost about $377 million. Increasing general K-12 school aids by 1% in each year of the budget would cost about $157 million, and increasing shared revenue to local governments by 1% in each year would cost about $25 million.
Dear Editor: Wisconsin’s projected surplus of $6.5 billion is an opportunity to realize Wisconsin values.
The University of Wisconsin is also valued by citizens. The surplus must support at least an inflationary budget increase, offsetting a continued freeze in undergraduate tuition. The UW educates thousands, supports businesses and farmers statewide, and its research and knowledgeable graduates are valuable to businesses.
Rumors had spread that the Richland Center campus would cease its degree programs in 2025, but Bell thought he would just squeeze in, completing his degree by spring 2024.
However, University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman’s decision last week to ax in-person classes at the Richland Center campus, starting July 1, upended Bell’s current and future career plans.
“When we found out about this news, it was really abrupt and devastating, sophomore Jackson Kinney said. “‘No one was really expecting this to happen.”
The cancellation of in-person classes at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville’s Richland campus next year” should not be read” as a cautionary tale for other branch campuses.
That’s according to UW System President Jay Rothman, who appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Morning Show” Thursday. He said the decision was “based on facts” specific to that location.
A ribbon-cutting event for a former storage room marked a milestone for Milwaukee Area Technical College.
MATC converted the small space at its Walker’s Square campus into a food pantry that opened Tuesday. It’s the last of MATC’s five campuses to open a food pantry for students, all of which launched within the last year.
The pantries couldn’t have come at a better time.
Soaring food costs have college students feeling the pinch. The need is especially great at Walker’s Square, which is on the near south side in the heart of Milwaukee’s Latino community. Many students at the campus are enrolled in the GED or English as a Second Language programs while working minimum wage jobs that don’t provide enough to cover rent, gas, groceries and other expenses.
The $20,000 annual commitment is among initiatives that aim to boost community engagement.
Current Interim Chancellor John Chenoweth, previously UW-Whitewater’s provost; UW-Green Bay Vice Chancellor for University Inclusivity and Student Affairs Corey A. King; Minnesota State University-Mankato Vice President for Student Success, Analytics and Integrated Planning Lynn D. Akey; Grand Valley State University Dean Paul Plotkowski; and Auburn University at Montgomery Provost Mrinal Mugdh Varma.
Noted: At UW-Madison, the most selective school in the state, it’s too early to say what, if any, academic recovery will be needed, according to John Zumbrunnen, the university’s vice provost for teaching and learning. There hasn’t been a spike in tutoring sessions. Nor has there been a higher rate of D and F grades awarded. But the university offered two semesters of a pass/fail grading policy, which “muddies the data picture for us.”
That’s not to say Zumbrunnen hasn’t fielded concerns from some instructors. In math, there’s been a slightly larger share of students placing into pre-calculus instead of calculus. A STEM instructor told him this year’s crop of students scored lower on a basic exam than in past years. He’s heard from a social sciences instructor who felt that students this fall weren’t quite as ready to read at a college level than in past years.
This is my 31st and final year as a professor on the campus that Brush Creek runs through. It was UW-Center Richland when I started, then UW-Richland of the UW Colleges, and will end as UW-Platteville Richland. It was recently announced that in-person degree instructional programs at UW-Platteville Richland, about 60 miles northwest of Madison in Richland County, will cease as of July 1, 2023.
The University of Wisconsin System’s smallest campus next fall will no longer offer face-to-face instruction to students, with UW’s top leader citing low enrollment and financial pressures making the sustainability of the campus’ traditional education model “untenable.”
With enrollment declining at the University of Wisconsin System’s two-year branch schools, President Jay Rothman has ordered UW-Platteville to cease degree programs at its Richland Center campus.
Wisconsin’s $6.6 billion surplus is an unparalleled opportunity to shape state policy. Along with the predictable talk of tax cuts and general investments in education, roads and health care, Democratic leaders in Madison should pay particular attention to one of the oldest public institutions in the Dairy State: the University of Wisconsin System.
In a letter Tuesday to UW-Platteville Interim Chancellor Tammy Evetovich, System President Jay Rothman outlined a four-step plan for the Richland Center campus, which includes moving all instructional programs to either the Platteville or Baraboo campuses for fall 2023 while developing a plan to “maintain a suitable presence” at the Richland County campus through such things as enrichment programs or courses for adults.
University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman ordered UW-Platteville’s chancellor Tuesday to stop offering degree programs at the school’s Richland campus in the face of declining enrollment.
University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman ordered UW-Platteville’s interim chancellor Tuesday to stop offering degree programs at the school’s Richland campus in the face of declining enrollment. For students attending the school, the news is both surprising and disappointing.
Noted: Additionally, $174,000 in funding will go toward scholarships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Nursing to establish a pipeline for future school nurses.
UW-Madison in October installed naloxone kits in dorms and dining areas, in an effort to reverse overdoses. The kits, known as Nalox-ZONE boxes, contain nasal spray naloxone, instructions on how to administer it and a breathing mask.
Other campuses, starting last year with UW-Oshkosh, have installed the kits in an effort organized by Wisconsin Voices for Recovery. The parents of Cade Reddington, 18, of Waunakee, and Logan Rachwal, 19, of Pewaukee, UW-Milwaukee students who died from overdoses involving fentanyl last year, urged campus officials to make the kits widely available.
“It’s Just Coffee” was the brainchild of a UW-Madison student who recognized that amid the political polarization in our country and on our campuses, students of differing backgrounds could discuss difficult topics — politics, religion, economics — in a respectful, civil way if they have a low-key, non-threatening environment for doing so. The program showed that students aren’t just willing but are eager to have meaningful, one-on-one conversations with people with whom they might disagree.
A University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire employee has filed a racial discrimination complaint that alleges she was harassed and demoted because she is white.
The complaint follows the firing of a former vice chancellor for equity, diversity, inclusion who alleges students and employees of color were opposed to white individuals having leadership roles in the campus’s multicultural affairs office.
But this is not just about one post-secondary system. Microcredentials are growing in other public higher education systems as well. The University of Wisconsin, Kansas State, and the University of Texas are but a few examples of other public systems where microcredentials are rapidly growing. This work is moving rapidly in the private higher-education space as well.
Program aims to boost confidence in women in male-dominated careers.
Quoted: In fact, the state’s higher education system is a major reason the industry is thriving, according to Dr. Zachary Morris, a researcher and associate professor for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health.
He said colleges and universities throughout Wisconsin are producing the highly-skilled workers that the biohealth sector needs, and research being done at those institutions also is helping to strengthen the industry.
“The universities, through the faculty, are in many cases steering or developing innovative technologies that these companies are then helping to spin out and commercialize,” he said.
The University of Wisconsin System sent a survey to students on Monday looking for their feelings about the state of free speech on the system’s campuses across the state.
The survey had previously been planned for May, but objections from chancellors, including by UW-Whitewater Chancellor James Henderson, who criticized the survey when he resigned from his post, caused it to be delayed.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching a search for a new provost, an administrative position ranking just second to the chancellor in terms of importance.
The current provost, John Karl Scholz, will serve until the end of the school year and then return to the economics department, where he has taught since 1988. A new provost is expected to start sometime next summer, UW-Madison announced Tuesday.
A random sample of students in the UW System will be asked to complete the survey, which includes questions about students’ attitudes toward free speech, viewpoint diversity, and self-censorship on campus.
UW-Madison upholds the consideration of race among many other factors in admissions.
The latest version of the survey asks students their perceptions of viewpoint diversity, self-censorship and freedom of expression on campus. Students and faculty previously feared Republican legislators could misuse its results, saying the survey comprised “leading questions” and signaled political interference in the System.
