Category: Opinion

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And so we ask once again: should we rethink the value of fraternities on U.S. college campuses?

Letter to the editor from David Vanness, associate professor of population health sciences in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and president of the UW-Madison chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

I sat proudly in Camp Randall on Saturday watching my oldest son graduate from UW-Madison. As a two-time graduate of UW, I looked out over the field of new graduates and marveled at what UW has meant to so many people.

“We can’t do more with less,” UW-Extension Regional Director Julie Keown-Bomar told people gathered at a recent Menomonie meeting. “We have to do less with less. We cannot be the same cooperative extension service that we used to be.”

ever in all of Chinese history did a government in the territory which is now China ever lay claim to the waters of what Vietnamese call the East Sea and Chinese the South Sea and Americans the South China Sea because American trading vessels in the 19th century often crossed this body of water on the way to China.

University of Wisconsin System faculty members have expressed outrage after the UW Board of Regents voted recently on tenure changes and an email surfaced from UW System President Ray Cross stating tenure should not protect faculty “who are no longer needed in a discipline.”

Column by Eric Sandgren, an associate professor and former administrator at UW-Madison.

In a recently publicized private memo, University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross compared tenured faculty “who are no longer needed in a discipline” to railway brakemen who, he claimed, demanded “a job for life even when that job was no longer necessary.” Cross’ analogy fails on two counts: First, it’s bad history. Second, and more importantly, it misses the point; Professors are not asking for a “job for life.” We are concerned that shortsighted and misinformed policies threaten to undermine the university and its mission.

Last Wednesday, after the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay faculty voted no-confidence in UW System President Ray Cross and the regents, Gov. Scott Walker used the discussion to enter misleading claims about faculty salaries and state support for higher education.

Editorial cartoon.

Column by Chad Alan Goldberg, a UW-Madison sociology professor and president of United Faculty and Academic Staff, AFT Local 223.

Cross has been a weak advocate for the UW System and its students — too mild in his defenses of higher education and too willing to accept compromises that harm UW-Madison and other campuses. The majority of regents have been worse; they have taken positions that have undermined the integrity and the strength of the UW System. Some outstanding faculty members have left; others are thinking about doing so. And those who remain have been undercut.

Letter to the editor: I find it amusing and obviously not a well-thought-out comment when Rep. Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, calls the UW faculty arrogant for having no confidence in the Board of Regents or University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross.

Letter to the editor: [I]f there is any takeaway between John’s involvement in the emerging sand mining industry and his role on the Board of Regents, to me it would be his unique ability to navigate uncharted waters and provide positive solutions with limited unintended consequences.

Several weeks ago, I completed five bracing years in Washington, D.C., as president of the Association of American Universities. What have I learned about research universities and their place in American life? Three things stand out: undergraduate education, crucial to liberal democracy, is showing signs of getting better; federal regulation of universities, an issue to which I had previously paid little attention, is stifling and out of date; and big-time intercollegiate athletics, incredibly popular, are also incredibly perilous for universities, as their moral and physical hazards multiply rapidly.

Declaring “no confidence” is cantankerous and irresponsible for anyone with a future invested in this institution.

By an overwhelming margin, faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison voted to express “no confidence” in UW System President Ray Cross and the system’s Board of Regents.

The Faculty Senate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison voted overwhelmingly Monday for a resolution of no-confidence in the UW System president and the Board of Regents.

Letter to the editor: By their actions, the governor, Republicans in the Legislature, the UW Board of Regents, and the University of Wisconsin System administration have shown “no confidence” in the UW faculty and in the long-term reputation of the university in recent years.

EDITOR: It’s rare to know ahead of time where Gov. Scott Walker will be making an appearance in this state. Many of us were shocked to learn he will be coming to Stevens Point Thursday to take part in the groundbreaking ceremony for a new science building at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. It is the first new building on the campus in more than 40 years, and funding for the building was approved many years ago.

There’s a lot of hypocrisy about Wisconsin professors’ freedom of speech and academic freedom. It’s easy to defend speech you like. A lot of people are defending only the speech they like. A challenge to left and right: Start being consistent.

Let’s take the time to do this right. Otherwise, we may be not only putting a new south Madison campus in a financial hole, but damaging what still is a key element in providing technical and vocational training for thousands of our young people.

Steineke is too oblivious to know it, but he’s providing the very reason why tenure is so important to a faculty that requires the freedom to embark on controversial research, offer scholarly opinions and produce academic papers that may not be politically popular at any given tim

Letter to the editor: UW-Madison has disclosed it is considering mandating “cultural competency training” for all university students, staff and administrators. This is likely a fine idea.

Letter to the editor: We should listen to the professor’s concerns about the difficulties faced by minority students and not reflexively condemn the messenger. The university was right to quickly apologize. Let’s hope the university learns from its mistakes. If the student is guilty, I hope he learns from his.

Former Gov. Tommy Thompson will get an honorary degree this month from UW-Madison. He is being cited for his dedication to the university and the “Wisconsin Idea.”