When President Donald Trump started cutting billions in federal research dollars, American universities saw it as a threat to the country’s research enterprise.
Universities outside the U.S. saw it as something else entirely: an opportunity.
UW-Madison is among the Big Ten campuses featured in a new ad that defends their research amid looming federal funding cuts and uncertainty.
The ad, “We Are Here,” aims to send a collective message to viewers about the impact of research happening on their campuses.
Morgridge Hall, the new home of the School of Computer, Data and Information Science, at UW-Madison seen from University Avenue in Madison, Wisconsin, on the first morning of classes, Sept. 3, 2025.
Exploding interest in computer and data sciences over the last decade at the University of Wisconsin-Madison led to hundreds of students on course waitlists and a lack of lecture halls large enough to accommodate demand.
The growing pains will begin to ease with the opening of Morgridge Hall this semester. The gleaming seven-story building is the home of the School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences. It houses the two most popular majors on this 50,000-student campus.
UW-Madison Housing & Dining hosted a “resident appreciation” dinner across campus on May 1, offering thousands of lobsters to students on meal plans. Staff even set up lobster-cracking stations to help students navigate the shells. At Liz Waters dining hall, salmon and steak were served instead.
Records obtained by The Cardinal show the university purchased about 2,354 pounds of lobster at $15.69 per pound, totaling more than $36,000 — excluding shipping and travel costs. The expense came from UW Dining’s $46 million annual operating budget, funded through housing contracts, meal plans and dining sales.
Switching from months of relaxation over the summer straight into heavy course loads and overwhelming numbers of due dates is stressful for anyone. Keeping track of a new schedule and planning for the weeks ahead can make adjusting to the new school year seem nearly impossible, and University of Wisconsin-Madison’s current first week setup might be to blame for this syllabus shock.
New Jersey father Anthony Verdura received a homesick call from his daughter last fall when she was five weeks into her first semester at UW-Madison.
That’s when Mary Morgan came in.
Verdura hired Morgan through her concierge business, Miss Mary Delivery, which caters to the university’s students and families, to surprise his daughter with a care package.
UW-Madison welcomed freshmen and transfer students to campus on Tuesday at a new student convocation.
Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, campus leadership, faculty and staff all helped with the kickoff event at the Kohl Center.
Lexi Westley comes from a family of coaches and athletes. But it took what she calls a “terrifying” experience with a coach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to motivate her to pursue coaching herself.
A little more than three years after coach Mackenzie Wartenberger resigned from her position as head coach of the UW-Madison women’s cross country team, Westley and four of her teammates are coming forward about what they call abusive behavior by Wartenberger.
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health professor and dean Jon Audhya considers how deep cuts to federal research funding are affecting scientific work and training of students.
Fired UW-La Crosse chancellor Joe Gow will appear on a TMZ documentary special about OnlyFans and its content creators airing on the Fox Network tonight, the first day of classes for the fall term.
Badgers fans love to win. But more important than any championship are the lives and wellbeing of the student athletes in red and white. They face enormous pressure to succeed in their sports, often with scholarships and additional compensation at stake.
That’s what makes the State Journal’s recent investigation into the women’s cross country and basketball teams so troubling. Winning, or trying to, trumped the best interests of students.
More Madison School District students could be eligible for automatic admission to the Universities of Wisconsin under a district policy that avoids having to break ties among top-ranked students.
The district says its approach the new Wisconsin Guarantee program complies with the law that created it, while the primary author of the law said neither her bill nor the law addresses Madison’s approach and it would take a court challenge to determine whether it is legal.
Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has studied how best to teach African American students. She told us an encouraging teacher can change a life.
“Many of our young people have their ceilings lowered, that somewhere around fourth or fifth grade, their thoughts are, ‘I’m not going to be anything special.’ What I think is probably happening at St. Mary’s is young women come in as, perhaps, ninth graders and are told, ‘Here’s what we expect to happen. And here’s how we’re going to help you get there.'”
Other voters, such as Will Brown, 20, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, urged the administration to pursue even more ambitious deportation goals.
Brown, who said he “couldn’t be more of a fan of Stephen Miller,” the White House aide credited with designing Trump’s immigration policy, noted that the deportation rate of Trump’s second term so far lagged that of the last two Democratic administrations.“Honestly, I don’t think they’re doing enough,” he said.
This ideological rot is not at all unique to Harvard. It’s the norm in teacher prep programs nationwide. The University of Wisconsin system has discussion circles reading “Anti-Racist Baby” and making Black Lives Matter friendship bracelets. The University of Florida fills its syllabi with such critical race theory icons as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Gloria Ladson-Billings. Columbia has a course on “Exploring Gender and Sexuality in Everyday Curriculum Practices.” Some of the most assigned authors, like Paulo Freire and Gloria Watkins, are outright Marxists.
The sale of UW-Milwaukee’s former Washington County branch campus to a private Christian school is moving forward, despite public outcry.
The Washington County Board Wednesday told the county executive to proceed with the sale of the campus to the Ozaukee Christian School for $3 million — which is $2 million less than the property’s appraised value.
The former University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Washington County campus will be sold to a Christian school and land conservation group.
The Washington County Board voted to move forward with the sale after a closed session meeting on Wednesday, despite objections from several community members who have raised questions about the sale price and why the county would sell to buyers who won’t pay taxes.
Democrats announced legislation to amend Wisconsin law to prohibit the concealed carry of firearms on college and university campuses in Wisconsin.
The legislation, which has been introduced in previous sessions and failed to advance, would make it a misdemeanor to possess a gun on campus, making the penalty up to nine months in jail and a fine of up to $10,000. The new stipulations would not apply to law enforcement or military personnel, nor anyone who possesses a gun on campus with permission.
Wisconsin Democrats introduced new gun safety reforms on Wednesday, focusing on colleges and universities. Lawmakers proposed extending gun-free zones, currently in place for K-12 schools, to all college campuses to protect students and staff.
Democratic lawmakers want to align gun laws for Wisconsin colleges and universities with those in place for K-12 schools by prohibiting concealed carry on campuses.
Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Rep. Brienne Brown (D-Whitewater) said during a press conference Wednesday that the bill would help protect students at a time when schools continue to be targets of gun violence.
As students are returning to campus, authorities are investigating false reports of active shooters at more than a dozen universities across the country, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Inside Higher Ed counted 19 confirmed swatting calls since Aug. 19, including at Mercer University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Utah and the University of New Hampshire.
Badger Bash begins 2-and-a-half hours before every home football game at Union South.
With the game against Miami of Ohio kicking off at 8 p.m. Thursday, this week’s Badger Bash will start at 5:30 p.m.
In a statement, a spokesperson for UW-Madison said the university “does not yet have clarity on the full impacts of” the ruling, but that it “puts at risk” more than $14 million for biomedical research.
“This figure represents the remaining money on 22 grants that were already approved and underway, which also means the time and money already spent on these projects will potentially go to waste, in addition to the money that will not be recovered,” said UW-Madison spokesperson Victoria Comella.
The fall semester for the Universities of Wisconsin campuses starts next week. But at least 50 students at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee still don’t know if they’ll be able to attend class.
University of Wisconsin football player Nyzier Fourqurean scored a small win in court Aug. 25.
Wisconsin district judge William Conley denied part of the NCAA’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit Fourqurean filed against it in July that seeks declaratory, injunctive and monetary relief against the NCAA for its rules related to how many years a student-athlete is eligible to play NCAA Division I football.
Early in the morning of Aug. 24, 1970, four anti-Vietnam War radicals — Karleton Armstrong, his brother Dwight Armstrong, David Fine and Leo Burt — used a van filled with almost a ton of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil to bomb UW-Madison’s Sterling Hall, killing researcher Robert Fassnacht and injuring three others.
The district announced Friday evening that it would not use weighted grading as part of its response to the Wisconsin Guarantee program. Approved by the state Legislature, the program guarantees admission to UW-Madison for students who rank in the top 5% of their class and guarantees admission to the 12 other four-year Universities of Wisconsin campuses for students who rank in the top 10%.
Gibson, 51, emerged as the top pick among 73 applicants to lead Milwaukee’s largest university. He succeeds Mark Mone, who led UWM for 11 years and is now on a yearlong sabbatical before returning to teach.
Gibson faces an array of challenges, including declining student enrollment, budget pressures and a presidential administration that’s put colleges in its crosshairs.
Professor Kevin Renken was in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s mechanical engineering department for nearly 40 years. But he may be remembered most for what UWM claimed he didn’t do: his job.
A UWM investigation last year alleged Renken wasn’t pulling his weight as professor in the last half of his career despite what the school admits was a “commendable” record of classroom teaching
“The reason why it resonated with students … is because it felt like an opportunity for them to be met on their own ground and to have a kind of shared ground with which to meet instructors or meet ideas,” says Nate Marshall, award-winning poet and assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Ultimately, like, the role of an educator is to connect the students in order to serve the students. So, if that’s not your way to connect with them, that’s cool. You find other ways.”
UW-Madison School of Education professor Nick Hillman explains how provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act set lower borrowing limits for medical and law students while changing other loan rules.
UW–Madison has eliminated a decades-old tutoring program, a move that some campus staff say will leave students without critical academic support.
The Academic Coaching to Thrive and Succeed (ACTS) program had operated for about 30 years, providing personalized tutoring to hundreds of students each year.
On the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, the keffiyeh — a checkered scarf with deep cultural significance for Palestinians — has become a focal point in the debate over free speech and overall student activism.
Thomas Gibson took the reins at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee about a month ago, and it’s safe to say he’s still settling into the job.
With a 7% budget cut, UW-Madison Libraries is closing the Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics Library at 4 p.m. Friday. The campus Social Work Library will shutter also at the end of the coming school year, and others will have reduced hours.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has been named the best college in Wisconsin for 2025, according to a recent report from Niche.
The school rankings website analyzed more than 1,000 colleges and universities across the U.S. for its 2025 Best Colleges in America report and related state reports.
“Our hope is that some of them will choose to remain here in Madison and work in Madison schools, where they have had a shortage of school psychologists,” said Katie Eklund, a professor in UW-Madison’s School Psychology program who led the project.
University of Wisconsin-Madison students will soon move into their dorms and apartments. Classes will begin early next month. And as a new school year gets underway, a variety of pressing challenges on campus will linger.
Embracing an attitude of lifelong learning can help seniors combat the effects of aging and find meaning in every day. In a study by Scientific American, seniors who regularly engaged in learning over three months performed similarly to adults 30 years younger on cognitive tests.
Whether it’s online learning, art classes or stargazing in Wisconsin state parks, educational opportunities can help make your golden years shine.
Effective in July, UW-Madison ended ACTS, which included its direct coaching services to students, Raul Leon, UW-Madison assistant vice provost for student engagement and scholarship programs, said in an Aug. 1 email to employees that the Wisconsin State Journal obtained.
Gov. Tony Evers is implementing pay raises for state employees without additional approval from the Legislature’s Joint Committee for Employment Relations, citing a recent state Supreme Court ruling.
Parents play a crucial role in setting their children up for success as young adults head off to college. The transition to college is often filled with independence and decision-making that can be challenging.
Evers’ legal claim on raises was tied to Vos following through on a promise in 2023 to use the employee relations committee to block pay increases for around 34,000 employees of the University of Wisconsin until state campuses eliminated all of their diversity, equity and inclusion positions. Later that year, Vos and the UW Board of Regents struck a deal to release the funding for pay increases in exchange for new limits on DEI hiring through 2026.
Both Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin are land-grant universities that profited from lands taken from Indigenous nations, as did at least 50 other universities throughout the U.S. Many are still profiting through their endowments.
The U.S. Morrill Act of 1862 gave states land taken from tribes by the federal government on the condition the land be sold or used for profit with the proceeds to help establish at least one agricultural college.
The top 50 schools for long-term career success:
50. University of Wisconsin-Madison
UW-Madison confirmed that Ridglan supplied the school with animals in the past. According to the school, dogs are used in research studies of cancer prevention, organ transplants, vaccines and other medical breakthroughs.
“Those studies have been supported by grants from federal agencies, nonprofit foundations and patient groups, and health care companies,” a university spokesperson said.
The loan changes may lure more professional students to UW-Madison and other public universities, where the cost of attendance is typically lower than at private institutions.
The UW Law School, for example, has aggressively fundraised to offer more need-based scholarships, contributing to a drop in the percentage of student borrowers from 78% in 2014 to 62% in 2024, said Rebecca Scheller, the law school’s associate dean for admissions and financial aid.
The Galin Scholars program is welcoming its third cohort of high school students this fall, continuing its expansion of free college prep in the greater Madison area.
The Madison-based nonprofit now supports 15 students from seven high schools. The first five students graduated from high school this summer and will begin college at Northwestern University, Lake Forest College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall.
12. University of Wisconsin System – UW (education).
The University of Miami asked a judge to dismiss or scale back a case alleging it interfered with agreements for a former University of Wisconsin football player.
Miami filed a motion Friday to dismiss a complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court in June by Wisconsin and collective VC Connect that alleged Miami tampered with cornerback Xavier Lucas.
The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has long argued — first as a cable news host and then in his current position — that “woke” policies undermine morale in the military. But some who have studied military history disagree with that assertion.
“Nothing in my nearly 25 years of experience in the military substantiates that argument,” said John W. Hall, a professor of military history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Hall, a 1994 West Point graduate, said that the military had been an early champion of diversity initiatives, “not out of any sense of innate progressivism or certainly not wokeness.” Rather, he said, “they were necessary for the effectiveness of the military.”
Northeast Wisconsin Technical College’s Green Bay leaders have overhauled nearly every course in recent years, accelerating them to move twice as quickly. Administrators and instructors say the intensive pace helps students perform better and prevents them from dropping out when they face hardships outside of school.
NWTC is part of a growing national trend of colleges moving to shorter courses, but it’s one of fewer to offer eight-week classes almost exclusively. Many others have recently flirted with the idea by piloting a smaller share of shortened course options.
Carroll University is preparing for projected record enrollment this school year with a more than $50 million facilities plan for its Waukesha campus.
Starting this month and continuing through July 2030, Carroll will sell or repurpose several underutilized buildings and begin three new projects.
Edith Noriega never intended to become a teacher. But after working with students, Noriega transitioned to a bilingual resource specialist role at Schenk Elementary School on the city’s east side. She also enrolled last year in the school district’s new Grow Your Own program.
The program provides tuition, a $17,000 stipend and benefits for Madison Metropolitan School District staff to work toward an associate’s degree from Madison College. Participants are then guaranteed admission to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to work toward a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and teaching credentials.
Brown has critiqued some of the ways DEI has been carried out. When he read an audit of Universities of Wisconsin DEI programs conducted by the Legislative Audit Bureau on behalf of the Legislature, he was struck that there seemed to be no consistent definition throughout the system for DEI.
But he also considers the anti-DEI wave a backlash to the protests in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd. “That woke up the world,” Brown says. “There was a coming together, and it wasn’t even politicized like that.”
Legislative Republicans nixed a plan to fund a UW-Madison program that recovers the remains of missing service members, but a new proposal would require the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents to pay for it.
A team of students and experts in the Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project at UW-Madison sifts through archives and conducts field excavations in an effort to return the remains of veterans who went missing in combat to their families.
Jake Baggott, UW-Madison associate vice chancellor and executive director of University Health Services, said in a statement that UW-Madison as a campus has been actively preparing over the last year for a potential measles case.
University Health Services led and coordinated a walkthrough exercise with campus, local and state public health officials to simulate their preparedness during a measles outbreak, Baggott said
When Bill Zhu started a computer science major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2021, he had no expectation the tech job market would dip, or would dip so soon. Over the previous decade, computer science became one of the most popular majors for new college students.
