Those of us who have been around Madison for a while can be forgiven for not getting too excited about a recent front-page Wisconsin State Journal story with a headline noting the Mosse Humanities Building “could be demolished.”
Letter to the editor from Rep. Daniel Riemer: The UW is one of the best deals in the United States. UW-Madison’s in-state tuition is the third lowest of the top 50 universities in the U.S. Meanwhile, according to the Goldwater Institute, UW-Milwaukee, now a Carnegie top-ranked Research One (R1) university, has among the lowest costs to educate per student of any R1 or R2 university in the country. In short, both research universities are low-cost models for the nation, especially UW-Milwaukee. Both of these great research universities now also get less than 20 percent of their funding from the state budget.
Letter to the editor from Taggert Brooks, a professor of economics, and John Nunley, an associate professor of economics at UW-La Crosse.
Letter to the editor from emeritus professor Lee Hansen: After 50 years of minority student programs at UW-Madison, why has it suddenly become necessary to institute “cultural competency training” for entering students and initiate a “big brother is watching you” system for reporting to campus administrators “hate” or “bias” incidents?
The Rising Star cave system, part of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in South Africa, has been well mapped and was explored by cavers for many years, but without any fossils being noted there. That changed in September 2013, when two South African cavers, Rick Hunter and Steve Tucker, entered a remote, unmapped chamber and found the first-known fossil bones of what is now called Homo naledi strewn across its floor.
Walking into Mrs. M—–’s Cabinet at the Milwaukee Art Museum is more like walking into a home than an traditional museum space. Located in the Constance and Dudley Godfrey American Wing, Mrs. M—-’s Cabinet is an interactive exhibit which invites viewers to create a narrative through objects collected by Mrs. M—-, a character who “exists somewhere between fact and fiction.”
Most people get upset stomachs from time to time. Usually, a few trips to the bathroom or antibiotics solve the problem. For pandas, it’s an entirely different story. Our research into panda digestion shows that pandas get upset stomachs so frequently it may help explain why it’s so hard for them to reproduce. Our work may, as a result, highlight a new way to boost pandas’ breeding success in captivity.
The Chazen Museum of Art on the UW-Madison campus is one of this city’s cultural gems. But it’s a lousy location for a bus depot.
Letter to the editor from David W. Cole, professor emeritus, University of Wisconsin Colleges.
How did a political novice with no governing experience and a faint grasp of policy become the Republican presidential nominee? The rise of Donald Trump becomes less of a mystery once you’ve done what I’ve been doing these last few years: Talk to the voters. What I’ve found is a burbling disdain that has now been given voice by the Trump campaign.
Again the great state of Wisconsin has mothered a class through her university, and sends it forth to serve. The test of culture is not in how much you may know, but how much you may do with your knowledge.
It’s one thing to attend to due diligence, double-check your numbers and make sure final budget documents are correct before releasing them.
Girl meets boy. Opposites attract. These are common themes in romantic movies, which usually end happily, with love conquering all. The movie “Me Before You,” which opened June 3 to better-than-predicted crowds, adds an interesting twist: able-bodied girl falls in love with quadriplegic man.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos laments that only six tenured University of Wisconsin professors have been fired in the last 20 years. Vos says that, at the national level, an estimated 2 percent of tenured faculty are dismissed each year.
Op-ed by Kathy Cramer: “A job for life.” Those are the words Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is using to describe tenure. It may be a terrible tact to take for his state’s university system, but it’s a smart move politically.
Former Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton tells the story of how she attended a recent gathering at which one of Gov. Scott Walker’s appointees regaled a group of young people about the give and take that is so much the bedrock of American democracy.
Open Government 101 is now in session. UW System officials — including the Board of Regents — please be seated.
Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president in large part because of voters who have not graduated from college. In the Indiana primary, for example, Trump won 47 percent of the vote among college grads — but 60 percent among those who had not earned a bachelor’s degree.
As former UW Athletic Director Pat Richter well knows, I wrote about the demise of the men’s varsity baseball team until I was blue in the face.
Letter to the editor: The kids playing baseball in Wisconsin deserve better.
Letter to the editor: Some of our UW faculty have moved to the University of Minnesota. Minnesota of all places! Good luck with the climate. It’s worse than ours.
A job for life. ”Those are the words Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is using to describe tenure. It may be a terrible tact to take for his state’s university system, but it’s a smart move politically.
Column by Republican state senator from Saukville: When fourth grade groups visit the Capitol, I explain to them my job is to listen to all of my constituents: students, teachers, and parents. In the end, I make the best decision for all of Wisconsinites in mind. UW System President Ray Cross has a similar dilemma. He must work with the legislature, the governor, the Board of Regents, the Chancellors, the faculty, and the students.
Letter to the editor: It’s funny how UW-Madison, which claims to be reeling from budget cuts by those nasty old Republicans in the state Legislature, has no trouble forking out $47 million to “upgrade” (gentrify) Witte Hall. This is merely one step (along with the $100 million upgrade of Memorial Union) in the process of transforming the campus into a four-star hotel and spa.
Letter to the editor: Is there nowhere in Wisconsin beyond the reach of the cement industry?
Letter to the editor: Regarding Gov. Scott Walker’s May 29 column, “We didn’t eliminate UW tenure,” there seems to be two main issues.
Letter to the editor: Chancellor Rebecca Blank’s sentiments in “Rebecca Blank: Dueling op-eds with Scott Walker dangerous for UW’s future is both understandable and wrong. Understandable because it is true that the chancellor is the one “under the hot lights” facing the bullies in the Republican Legislature and Gov. Walker, but wrong because bullies need to be confronted.
Letter to the editor: The Republican attack on UW has led to professors leaving the university in droves. UW-Madison professors bring in around $1 billion in research grants each year. That’s more than twice as much money as the university gets from the state.
Letter to the editor: In writing about professor Dietram Scheufele and his take on conflict surrounding the UW, editor Paul Fanlund sides with Scheufele’s belief that rhetorical framing is more important than the hard work of activism. Did Fanlund feel the same when the governor and Legislature tried to rewrite open records laws?
You can always find a surprising tidbit while reading a newspaper, but the May 26 edition of The Post-Crescent takes the cake. That day’s column by state Rep. Jim Steineke should be given an award for brazen misrepresentation. Mr. Steineke writes how much he appreciates those who work in education, yet for the past five years, Mr. Steineke has been at the forefront of those legislators who have led the attack against public education in Wisconsin.
Letter to the editor: With all due respect to UW English chair Caroline Levine, her comparison makes zero sense.
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is pointing to data from the University of Wisconsin System showing only six tenured professors have gotten the boot over the last 20 years.
On May 20, the UW Colleges faculty council voted no confidence in our president, Ray Cross, and the Board of Regents. This followed no-confidence votes by numerous other UW campuses.
Politicians come and go. UW-Madison is here to stay — and so are the vast majority of its professors. That’s reassuring.
Walker’s attempt to eliminate language detailing that “Wisconsin Idea” pledge caused a lot of controversy in Wisconsin, and nationally. It was embarrassing for Walker because it reinforced an impression of him as a political careerist who had little interest in public education or public service.
Written by Ray Cross, president of the University of Wisconsin System.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos talking tough about UW faculty reminds me of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” where: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Ray Cross’s selection as UW System president in 2014 sounded promising. He had a Ph.D. in university administration and experience as an engineer, business owner, consultant, professor and college president. He’d been with the System since 2011 and seemed to be well regarded by colleagues, legislators and Regents.
I am always amazed when the people of Wisconsin are angry at the staff of our wonderful university over salaries and tenure.
Most faculty and staff at UW do not have tenure and accordingly can be easily dismissed for unwelcome criticism or imagined “arrogance.”
Almost 35,000 students graduated from college in Wisconsin this month. They and their families were proud of that accomplishment. They believed that their own investment in higher education would pay off in a better life.
By now the Mincome experiment is well known. In the 1970s, every resident of Dauphin, a small Manitoba town, was given the option to collect substantial cash payments without work requirements. Economist Evelyn Forget’s findings about Mincome’s positive effects on health and education helped to resuscitate the concept of a basic income in Canada. With basic income pilots on the horizon, it is worth considering new lessons from an old experiment.
Some people believe higher education’s financial woes in Wisconsin began the day Gov. Scott Walker took office in 2011. They would be mistaken.
In March 2013, Rebecca Blank had to know the touchy political terrain onto which she was stepping.
Today’s elite college students face a unique set of pressures. On the professional side life is competitive, pressured, time-consuming, capitalistic and stressful. On the political side many elite universities are home to an ethos of middle-aged leftism. The general atmosphere embraces feminism, civil rights, egalitarianism and environmentalism, but it is expressed as academic discourse, not as action on the streets.
Purdue University President Mitch Daniels, who served as Indiana’s governor from 2005 to 2013, just launched “Back a Boiler,” which is accepting applications for the fall semester in West Lafayette. The innovative program lets students avoid borrowing tens of thousands of dollars in loans — debt that forces many young people to put off buying homes and getting married.
Gov. Scott Walker is annoyed at faculty “no-confidence” votes against the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents and UW System President Ray Cross. It comes as the university system appears ready to make significant campus-by-campus changes.
The contrast couldn’t have been more stark. The reigning Republican governor of Wisconsin was in Green Bay at the annual GOP state convention railing about overpaid and underworked university professors and suggesting they should be happy that they make more money than most working people.
Every year as spring unfolds, fruit growers around Wisconsin start feeling anxious, wondering whether a late frost will harm their crop. Overall, temperatures are warming across the state amidst global climate change, but this pattern is accompanied by unseasonable cold weather events, such as the late spring frost much of the state experienced earlier this month.
It would be a mistake to believe higher education’s financial woes in Wisconsin began the day Gov. Scott Walker took office in 2011.
Column by Lisa H. Cooper, an associate professor in UW-Madison’s English department.
Column by state Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison: “Oh, he’s been gone for a year to the private sector. They waited for the real estate market to get better and when the house sells, they’ll join him.” This was the explanation from a constituent when I mentioned all the For Sale signs in front of houses owned by UW-Madison employees.
Column by Paul Wilson, a professor of nuclear engineering at UW-Madison’s Engineering Physics Department, and the interim chair of the Energy Analysis and Policy program of the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies
Letter to the editor: While UW-Madison professor Caroline Levine’s (Enough With Scott Walker and the GOP — I’m Leaving) concern about the erosion of state financial support for UW-Madison is justified, her narrow solutions are problematic. She suggests large increases in student tuition at the same time another article in Cap Times states that the average student graduates from the UW System with $29,000 in debt. She bemoans that only 27.5 percent of students can be admitted from out-of-state (who pay significantly higher tuition).
Letter to the editor: UW English professor Caroline Levine’s opinion piece on UW brings to light a major challenge faced by public universities: the obligation to serve residents of the states that created and partially fund them versus maximizing the quality of their product.
Column from state Rep. Melissa Sargent, D-Madison: I’m about to embark on a journey that parents all over Wisconsin celebrate. My oldest son, Devin, is graduating high school and will be attending UW-Madison this fall.
Letter to the editor: As UW-Madison updates its policies to further prohibit smoking on campus, the grocery store’s removal of nicotine products — including e-cigarettes — greatly supports the many students who want to live and attend classes on a campus where smoking doesn’t exist.
The letter in Tuesday’s paper “Phil Hands cartoon insulted trade workers” was comparing apples to oranges. It does take a lot of training in a trade or technical school to become a welder. However, this writer has no idea what it takes to maintain a world-class university such as UW-Madison.
Tens of thousands of graduates are crossing commencement stages at campuses throughout the University of Wisconsin System this month. It is a grand achievement, and worthy of all the celebrations that are taking place. We have had the privilege of participating in a number of them.
It’s hard to recall a school year in Wisconsin with more conflict than the one that is drawing to a close. Changes to the University of Wisconsin System’s tenure and shared governance policies received much debate, pitting faculty, staff and their supporters against lawmakers and other state officials.
