The issues in the debate over proposed changes to the University of Wisconsin System are fundamental and important. I do not to wish undercut this discussion but to expand it to include the ways that members of the UW Systems Board of Regents are selected. The current process is archaic and needs extensive reorganization.
We’ve introduced legislation to decrease tuition debt for higher education. They’ll be passing a budget with a $250 million cut to our University of Wisconsin system.
The great K-12, undergraduate and graduate education systems of Wisconsin have been built by the hard work and investment of generations. But to destroy them, the Legislature and Gov. Scott Walker need only to continue swinging the hammer of their destructive legislation.
It’s common to fret over unintended consequences. But what about intended consequences?In Wisconsin, lawmakers are debating a proposed change to state law that would weaken tenure protections at the University of Wisconsin system’s schools . If it passes, faculty could be terminated whenever “such an action is deemed necessary due to a budget or program decision.” Twenty-one scholarly associations, including the American Historical Association, the Association of College & Research Libraries and the Modern Language Association, denounced this effort for its threat to shared governance and academic freedom. And, to be sure, those are threats not to be minimized. In the age of “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” academic freedom is under siege.
On a sunny, early summer day, Memorial Union Terrace on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is idyllic. The high, cloudless skies and cool blue water of Lake Mendota serve as a backdrop to coeds drinking beer, sunning themselves and studying for exams. (Subscription required.)
Sweeping changes to the UW System sought by Gov. Scott Walker and his allies are fueled by public misconceptions regarding faculty workload and the overall cost of the UW System.
Letter to the editor from Richard D. Legon, president of the Association of Governing Board and Universities, and Susan Whealler Johnston, executive vice president of the Association of Governing Boards.
In the fall of 1986, I was one of a group of young upstarts who thought we would take on one of the oldest student newspapers in the country.
On Thursday, Pope Francis issued his newest encyclical, “Laudato Sii” (Praised Be To You), making the case that the environment is a moral issue. Catholics, and all people of good will, are asked to care for creation as God’s gift and to preserve a quality of life for future generations. Francis believes we are in danger of losing sight of the giftedness of creation. He is concerned that while Genesis commands humankind to “till and keep,” it has become clear that we have “tilled too much” and “kept too little.”
We are currently earning our doctorates in economics at universities in California and Massachusetts, but we left our hearts in Wisconsin.
Anyone concerned about America’s future generations has to be dismayed at the condition of public higher education.
Walking through Chicago’s Green City farmers’ market in the heat of August, it’s hard to overlook the abundance of heirloom tomatoes, in colors ranging from near black to pink or green, filling plastic bins and laid out on tables. Some are small as marbles, others large and lobed, almost like bell peppers. Their skins are often fragile, prone to splitting and poorly suited to lengthy journeys in refrigerated trucks.
Closed to the public. That’s the sign that state officials apparently want to hang on the selection process for top leaders at the University of Wisconsin System.
Last month, the Joint Finance Committee struck tenure for University of Wisconsin faculty from state law.
Editorial condemning the legislative Joint Finance Committee’s amendment to the state budget bill exempting the UW System from the requirement that names of five finalists for key jobs be made public.
Letter to the editor from University of Iowa associate professor emeritus. “When a top-tier university such as UW-Madison abandons tenure, other universities can almost overnight build stellar departments by hiring departing UW-Madison faculty.”
“Recent action by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee has the potential to threaten that longstanding commitment to fearless inquiry. I am worried about the risk this creates for UW-Madison, by alienating and demoralizing the faculty who have built this into one of the world’s finest education and research institutions. Abrupt changes to tenure and shared governance — another historic underpinning of UW-Madison — could drive away the people we most need to attract and retain. That these changes are being recommended without public discussion or consultation from those who will be most affected adds to our collective concern.”
Contrarian columnist’s take on tenure debate.
Column by Sen. Vinehout, D-Alma, on the proposal to suspend the the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau’s requirement to to conduct an annual financial audit of the UW System.
Letter to the editor from parent of incoming freshman from New Jersey.
Column by Kirstie K. Danielson, who received a Ph.D. from UW–Madison and is currently an assistant professor in the Division of Transplant Surgery at the University of Illinois–Chicago, and Scott Wittkopf, who attended UW-Madison and is a political communications consultant and co-founder of public policy think tank Forward Institute.
Video commentary from local radio personality Mitch Henck on state budget provisions that would hit tenure at UW-Madison.
The University of Wisconsin System is under an attack more subtle but perhaps just as dangerous as when “Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy declared it to be a “nest of communist traitors.” Unfortunately, the UW System and UW Foundation leadership response to this attack has been a clumsy campaign alternating between denial and a perplexing “trust us” mentality.’ (By David Vanness, associate professor of population health sciences.)
Letter to the editor from Madison resident Teloh, professor emeritus from Vanderbilt University.
Wisconsin counties have long relied on their University of Wisconsin cooperative extension to answer questions about and to encourage development in agriculture, horticulture, family living, youth and 4-H. However, the recent proposed UW System budget cut could mean Wisconsin counties lose from 65 to 80 of those local UW extension agents. Rural Wisconsin will be hardest hit.
Regardless of what you think about the current struggle for power over the University of Wisconsin, it is sending messages about our state and especially its flagship campus across the country and even internationally. American citizens and big media outside Wisconsin have become embroiled in our UW Badger Civil War.
The University of Wisconsin System’s tenure policies would more make sense if every university professor were like the one this newspaper profiled on its front page on Sunday.
Pick up any paper or magazine, and you’re likely to see a front-page article on college: It costs too much, spawns too much debt, is or isn’t worth it.
The University of Wisconsin (UW) system could, within the month, no longer have a nationally recognized tenure system.
Re “Unions Subdued, Walker Turns to Tenure at Wisconsin Colleges” (front page, June 5):
(Video) And to think we started this year with the goal of reinvigorating The Wisconsin Idea. Now we are afraid it is in danger of being destroyed.
On May 29, the Joint Finance Committee decided to fix the University of Wisconsin in its budget bill. The problem is, the university wasn’t broken.
Betty and I attended our granddaughter’s graduation ceremony in mid-May. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in four years, high GPA and no debts. It was a grand day, as graduation should be. The weather threatened early but cleared up for a few hours before the storms rolled in.
Another secrecy provision has been slipped into the state budget with virtually no discussion or public input.
Until I was sixteen-years-old, I thought the University of Wisconsin – Madison = “college.”
UW–Madison is the fourth-largest research institution in the nation, with awards in 2013 reaching more than $1.1 billion. For the past 20 years, it has ranked among the top five universities overall for research funding from various sources. It also ranks sixth of all the nation’s universities for patents received.
And to think we started this year with the goal of reinvigorating The Wisconsin Idea. Now we are afraid it is in danger of being destroyed.
Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal for weakening tenure at Wisconsin’s highly respected state university system and undermining the faculty’s role in campus governance will appeal to conservative voters whose support he needs to win the Republican presidential nomination.
The campus set is roiled again because state leaders have dared to challenge the concept of tenure for professors within the University of Wisconsin System.
Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, thinks he’s hit political pay dirt with his proposal to gut faculty tenure protections at his state’s public universities, notably the flagship University of Wisconsin, long one of the nation’s best state universities. His idea is to remove tenure protection from state law, and leave the actual policy to the Board of Regents, his political appointees.
My great-great-grandmother, Anna Norsman, graduated from UW-Madison in 1902. More than a century after she matriculated, I graduated from that very same school. A member of my immediate family graduated from UW-Madison every generation in between.
Another secrecy provision has been slipped into the state budget with virtually no discussion or public input.
Under Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin has become one of the great laboratories of conservative governance, with a record of union-busting, abortion-restricting, voter-ID-enacting policies that are at odds with the state’s tradition of progressivism. Unlike neighboring Minnesota, which has remained far more liberal — and whose economy is doing far better than Wisconsin’s — the Badger State has seen its Republican establishment increasingly entrenched by enacting policies of fear, resentment and suspicion of the sort that were so well described in Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”
What happens in Wisconsin will not stay in Wisconsin. Lawmakers here are moving quickly to hollow out the definition of tenure and strip away due process rights for faculty members and academic staff. For legislators in other states who want to dismantle public higher education, they might look here to find new plays for their playbooks.
Yes, I’m being a bit hyperbolic but not by much. When I read the so-called UW “reforms” that passed the Joint Finance Committee the other day, that’s what popped into my mind: The Republican vision for the UW sort of reminds me of University of Phoenix.
I am writing in hearty support of John Wiley’s rousing guest column Tuesday, “UW-Madison has put Wisconsin on the world map.” Former Chancellor Wiley shows how intentionally, for over a century, our university and its state leaders have helped create a world-class university, one that is known and admired throughout the country and around the globe.
The first half of John Wiley’s guest column Tuesday, “UW-Madison has put Wisconsin on the world map,” cannot be argued with. UW-Madison is positively known worldwide and its founding membership in Association of American Universities has been to its credit since 1900.
On May 27, the Capital Times published a column by 13 students representing the Associated Students of Madison, “UW cops Tweetalong shows disregard for students realities.” Below, Susan Riseling, associate vice chancellor and chief of UW-Madison Police, responds to the students.
Everything that affects the university affects us all, and should be of concern to every Wisconsin citizen. This state has invested a great deal in the university since its very founding, and has a lot at stake in preserving that investment.
Dear Editor: The letter writer who thinks that if part-time faculty at Madison College and UW are paid substantially less than full-time faculty, they can simply apply to become full time, I have two comments. First, it’s extremely difficult to get one of those full-time teaching positions because those position come with generous pay packages. Second, many of those part-timers are women, so if women do the same job as men, shouldn’t they get equal pay?
Question of the day: If Wisconsin was a corporation and not a state, would you invest in its stock? If, as I would argue, one of Wisconsin’s major assets is a world-class public university, why would management decide to undermine it?
The announcement that the Professional Golf Association’s Champions Tour will hold an annual event at Madison’s University Ridge Golf Course is a big deal. It adds some “big league” status to our city.
Wisconsin State Journal editorial from May 28, 1915 on maneuvers of then-Gov. Phillips to create a new governing board made up of his appointees. “Where is the alumni of Wisconsin. Where are its officers? Why are they not engaging in the activities of the defense of a university which needs no defense, before the eyes of the civilized world; needs defense only before those who would cripple it for political purposes, cripple it to gain support of the thoughtless and those who may hate it because it has never preached the right of predatory powers to rule American people.”
Column from Downs, professor of political science, law and journalism: “With increasing frequency, especially on college campuses, speakers presenting unpopular views — or views unpopular with a vocal minority of the audience — are being disrupted or ‘shouted down’ until they leave the stage. This has happened at UW-Madison, where I am a professor, and at many other universities.”
Groundbreaking news was recently announced for Wisconsin: Hunters could soon possibly wear blaze pink in the woods, as well as blaze orange.
Editorial: The governor proposed the $300 million cut to UW System as part of a larger plan to give the state’s 13 four-year universities and 13 two-year colleges more autonomy. Freedom from state purchasing rules and construction fees could have saved UW significant money to help offset the state cut. But lawmakers have largely rejected that flexibility. So they also should reject most of the cut, especially if tuition is frozen. That’s only fair.With the economy improving, Wisconsin shouldn’t be skimping on higher education. Other states are wisely investing in their universities. Ten chambers of commerce representing thousands of businesses across the state sent a powerful letter to the Joint Finance Committee on Wednesday, urging it to reduce $300 million cut to UW. The letter stressed the positive impact the System has on the state economy and jobs.
With increasing frequency, especially on college campuses, speakers presenting unpopular views – or views unpopular with a vocal minority of the audience – are being disrupted or “shouted down” until they leave the stage. This has happened at my own campus and many others.
Noted: Not only is Wisconsin lagging behind the rest of the country in job creation, the jobs being added in our state are mostly poverty-wage occupations, according to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center on Economic Development. The job quality crisis is so severe that the UW-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty recently found that poverty levels are increasing in Wisconsin even as employment increases.
Patents on scientific discoveries made in academic or non-profit settings don’t necessarily limit research. Generally speaking, inventions made with federal funding can be patented, but the university or nonprofit institution behind the researcher usually owns the patent rights. The researcher is credited as the inventor but the researcher’s employer — usually, the university — controls the patent and determines who may use the invention and for what purpose.
While scientists cannot ever fully control how their scientific discoveries will be used, they can profoundly affect the application by example and moral persuasion. Fears that scientific breakthroughs might lead to a slippery slope, ethically or medically, shouldn’t scare society into trying to prohibit controversial work.
