The 2023-24 Wisconsin legislative session is underway, with debates brewing on issues ranging from public safety, abortion access, tax cuts and the state’s projected $7 billion budget surplus, funding for schools and more.
Republicans approved a plan Thursday to cut the University of Wisconsin System’s budget by $32 million in an attempt to force the school officials to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programming.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN: The University of Wisconsin System’s budget would be cut by $32 million, leaving UW nearly half a billion dollars short of funding it requested. Republicans cut the amount they say would be spent on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, over objections from UW leaders who say they may have to raise tuition and cut programs in response. The budget also does not include funding for UW’s top priority building project, $197 million to demolish and build a new College of Engineering building on the Madison campus. Republican leaders say there are ongoing discussions about funding that project.
Republicans on the Legislature’s budget committee passed their version of the state’s two-year spending plan Thursday night, one that would cut income taxes by $3.5 billion across all brackets, including for the state’s wealthiest residents.
Republican lawmakers who control the Legislature’s budget-writing committee on Thursday voted to cut funding to the University of Wisconsin System by $32 million and nearly 200 positions in an effort to eliminate diversity offices and programming on campuses.
Republican members of the Legislature’s budget-writing committee were poised Thursday to fulfill an earlier promise to slash funding for the University of Wisconsin System in an effort to curb diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programming on campuses across the state.
The University of Wisconsin System, which does not have local property tax authority under state law, received around $15,079 per full-time-equivalent student. That funding ranked Wisconsin eighth worst in the nation.
University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman defended campus diversity programming this week as Republican state lawmakers consider cutting university funding by around $32 million because of opposition to those efforts.
Campus closures, tuition hikes and the end of some educational programs are all possibilities if the Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee goes through with proposed cuts over diversity, equity and inclusion offices on campus, UW System President Jay Rothman said Monday.
“The public funding for our four-year university system is currently ranked 42nd out of 50 states in the nation,” Rothman told the committee. “I’m going to say that again, 42nd out of 50 states in the nation. I’ve lived in this state my entire life. That is a very different complexion than what I grew up with in this state. That is disturbing to me.”
Wisconsin’s top state legislative Republican continued his attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the state’s public universities, calling the programming “the single most important issue” and claiming he was embarrassed to be a University of Wisconsin System alumnus because of it.
Wisconsin technical colleges would lose their taxing authority and depend more heavily on state funding under an amended bill approved during a legislative committee Thursday.
Wisconsin Republicans had to delay a crucial vote to cut funding to the University of Wisconsin school system. The Wisconsin GOP couldn’t come to a final decision about how much to cut from the school’s budget. But that hasn’t dampened calls to punish UW for daring to promote diversity on campus.
“UW-Madison is aware of non-sanctioned Facebook groups, such as the one you flagged,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. “When these come to our attention, we first attempt to message the group moderator, and then file terms of service complaints to ensure that the groups are clearly marked as unaffiliated and do not use university logos or marks. In general, we suggest that students and parents follow official UW-Madison Facebook accounts for the most accurate and up to date information.”
A fierce battle over diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education is being waged in the Wisconsin State Assembly, where it has temporarily paralyzed the state budget vote.
Identifying which colleges are at risk of closure is a tricky task.
Cost, location and the look of a campus have always been important factors in the college search. But in the wake of several college closures across the Midwest and Plains this year — Cardinal Stritch in Wisconsin, Finlandia University in Michigan, Presentation College in South Dakota and Iowa Wesleyan University — some families are paying more attention to finances.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said Wednesday in a newspaper report that he won’t sign the state budget if Republican lawmakers follow through on their plan to cut funding for the state university system’s diversity officers, escalating a bitter fight over dollars for the state campuses.
Evers said Wednesday during a stop at a cheese plant outside of Monroe that such a cut would be “a ridiculous effort” on Vos’ part.
“To cut, at this point in time, the University of Wisconsin System when we have a $7 billion surplus is irrational,” he said. “I’m hopeful that will change before the budget is passed.”
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said Wednesday in a newspaper report that he won’t sign the state budget if Republican lawmakers follow through on their plan to cut funding for the state university system’s diversity officers, escalating a bitter fight over dollars for the state campuses.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said Wednesday he would veto any state budget that includes a proposed $32 million, Republican-backed state funding cut aimed at eliminating University of Wisconsin System diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
Wisconsin Republicans have delayed a vote on the state’s budget for the University of Wisconsin System, hours after a top GOP leader pledged the Legislature would cut the UW’s budget by tens of millions of dollars.
Lawmakers writing the next state budget spent eight hours behind closed doors Tuesday only to delay action on the University of Wisconsin System after the Legislature’s top Republican said UW campuses would see a $32 million cut in state funding − a move the Democratic governor characterized as a “war” on higher education.
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.
