Recently, University of Wisconsin Chancellor Rebecca Blank called for an increase in out-of-state tuition at UW. Blank has said the university is underselling its product to students who live outside of Wisconsin.
It will be interesting to watch how legislative Republicans react to a recently introduced bill aimed at providing some relief to Wisconsin students saddled with large debt.
As the partial shutdown of the federal government drags on, attention has shifted to the looming Oct. 17 deadline when the Treasury will be out of money, and unable to raise more unless the House of Representatives authorizes an increase in the debt ceiling.
The presidents of St. Norbert and Ripon colleges recently wrote a column, ?True student-athletes are in Division III,? extolling the virtues of NCAA Division III student-athletes who are ?students first, athletes second.?
More transparency. Improved communication. Better decision-making. Those are the top three priorities for the UW System Board of Regents, according to board President Michael Falbo and Vice President Regina Millner, who met with our editorial board last week.
Former WIBA radio personality Peter Boam said his granddaughter will be enrolled at the University of Wisconsin next fall and he can’t believe that UW officials and even alumni allow this behavior.
Rebecca Blank, new UW-Madison chancellor, noted recently that state support has slipped to 15 percent of overall UW-Madison spending. But, says Winnebago County Executive Mark Harris, with Walker in power, she and other UW officials must tread carefully: ?They can?t afford to take them on head-on.? (Also refers to research by Kathy Cramer.)
Quoted: Catherine Compton-Lilly, associate professor of education; Adam Gamoran, former director of WCER; H. Gary Cook, director of research at UW-Madison’s WIDA Consortium.
The trillion-dollar student debt burden has spawned many debates about the value of college. Some argue that we educate too many young people. Indeed, average tuition costs have gone up faster than the rate of inflation. The cost of college today is, in inflation-adjusted terms, roughly double what it was in 1980. This creates legitimate concerns about the continued affordability of a college education.
If Congress allows the government to shut down on Tuesday, the nations investments in scientific research and technological innovation will suffer irreparable harm, resulting in a loss of crucial projects, new technologies and jobs for Americans.
For the most part, last year?s editorial board was pleased with the decision to appoint Rebecca Blank as our university?s next chancellor. While impressed by her financial and academic experiences in previous positions, the board urged Blank to embrace the opportunities being a Badger would present to her, such as getting to know a diverse student body and engaging with the unique governance structure on which our university prides itself. A few months and a few new members later, we find ourselves taking the same position.
The fiasco with the new concessionaire at the Badgers? first football game this season served to underscore just how low on the totem pole the fans in the stands have fallen.
It was dubbed “Finding Common Ground,” a Sept. 5 summit to bring together state legislators, University of Wisconsin regents and other university leaders to talk about ways to mend fences after a series of trust-eroding episodes.
In a recent Huffpo column entitled “Hidden Truths About American Colleges Abroad,” Jim Sleeper makes some alarming accusations. He draws an analogy between American universities that are creating overseas programs and Stalin-era apologists for the Soviet regime of the 1930s.
Blank?s slate is fullPublished Sept. 5, 2013 at 2:29 p.m. On the day I met and interviewed Rebecca Blank, the newly appointed chancellor at the University of Wisconsin, one of the headlines of the day out of Madison was that a journalist had been arrested because he was reporting that people were being arrested for gathering and singing in the capitol building without a permit.
If ever there was a need for a ?can?t we all get along?? moment, this is it.
This Labor Day, we urge Wisconsinites from all walks of life to remember that the history of our great state has always been one of progress.
Noted: Academic freedom isn?t the only ideal at risk. In 2009, when the University of Wisconsin at Madison was invited by the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan to help create a biotechnology program, the Americans proposed instead to design a school for the humanities and social sciences, one inspired by ?the Wisconsin Idea,? a progressive vision of labor rights and open government. Something very different was built.
The iPhone continues to be an unambiguous smash hit product, especially in North America. But Android-powered smartphones, notably those from Samsung, have become a vibrant and dangerous competitor. While the phones are ultimately similar on many dimensions, screen size has become an ever-increasing differentiator. While the screen size of Android phones seem to grow on an almost daily basis, the iPhone has increased in size only once during its life, and remains considerably smaller (and especially narrower, likely to facilitate one -handed use) than its plethora of Android rivals.
Hector DeLuca, Rock Mackie and Richard Davidson have the kind of academic credentials admired by their academic colleagues at UW-Madison and far beyond.
With barely 15% of the school?s funding now coming from taxpayers, it?s no wonder that the new chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is planning a fund-raising campaign.
This summer I had the opportunity to teach an English class on the UW-Madison campus to a group of high school juniors in the PEOPLE Program. The purpose of the PEOPLE Program (Pre-College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence) is to mentor and provide scholarships to students who belong to historically under-represented groups at the UW.
As I seated myself among more than 100 established or would-be entrepreneurs at the Badger Startup Summit at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Friday, I began to conduct my own unscientific poll. Motivating me was an article in The Wall Street Journal two days earlier about a recent study by Ross Levine and Yona Rubenstein indicating that entrepreneurship seems to be linked with mischievous tendencies such as shoplifting, marijuana use, skipping school, etc. as a teenager.
A soft pink, a glowing red, even a cyanotic purple ? millions of women and girls apply lipstick every day. And not just once: some style-conscious users touch up their color more than 20 times a day, according to a recent study. But are they also exposing themselves to toxic metals?
There?s this perception out there that the University of Wisconsin volleyball program is in rebuilding mode.
Tammy Baldwin readily admits she has a soft spot for academic researchers and the federal dollars that often help to support them. Her grandfather was a UW-Madison biochemist who worked at the Institute for Enzyme Research for decades.
One of the annual rites of early fall near the UW-Madison campus arrives this week in the form of ?Moving Days,? that super-charged, super-condensed few days Downtown when thousands of students move out of their apartments and thousands more move in.
Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) recently stood up with and for low-wage workers, supporting an increase in the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. No one should be surprised that she got scolded for it on these pages by the leader of the MacIver Institute, “free market voice for Wisconsin.” But we can hope that Moore continues to pay attention to reality, not the scolds.
The expected gutting of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder has captured many headlines of late, and with good reason.
More than 45,000 dogs and 68,000 monkeys have been killed in Madison at UW-Madison and Covance over the past 10 years, according to reports submitted to the U.S. Department of Agriculture by each facility. Many of these animals have endured multiple experimental procedures and profound environmental and social deprivation.
Last Sunday?s editorial minimized the impact of interest rates on students by suggesting the loan ?deal? approved by Congress is ?reasonable.? (Muñoz is a student at UW?Madison Law School.)
Remember the University of Wisconsin?s old fieldhouse? It was steeped in tradition. The players and the fans enjoyed the ambiance, but the university raised money to build the Kohl Center. Now basketball is played in facilities that look the same in Madison, Champaign or Louisville, except Chihuly glass makes UW?s arena unique.
On July 30, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on newly released emails between Scott Walker?s campaign staff and county aides in 2010, back when the future governor was Milwaukee County executive.
The Associated Press reported that the Universityof Wisconsin Board of Regents recently met with General Electric Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt, who spoke with the board about the future of business and its role in growing the economy.
You had to reach the 19th and final paragraph, but there it was ? the last words in an online story about Kevin Reilly?s upcoming departure after nine years as president of the University of Wisconsin System.
Co-author Daniel Bier of the Waisman Center: Finding workers who improve the bottom line is the goal of any successful business. However, too often workers with disabilities get overlooked. In Wisconsin, the employment rate is 70% for working-age persons without disabilities, while only 37% of people with disabilities are on the job. In other related employment measures for these workers, Wisconsin is in the bottom half of states.
University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly prioritized and boosted the number of college graduates across Wisconsin.
Five weeks ago, I groused in a column that Kevin Reilly, president of the UW System, had failed to stand tall against overblown attacks by Republicans who control Wisconsin?s government.
Interim UW-Madison Chancellor David Ward prioritized this (customized learning via technology) effort. That?s something new Chancellor Rebecca Blank must continue.
?Once you have more than 20, you can have interference,? said Donald Downs, a UW-Madison political science, law and journalism professor and expert on free speech. ?You?ve got to pick some number.?
Back in 1988, the University of Wisconsin-Madison was at the forefront in the national battle over political correctness. That year, the campus governing bodies passed speech codes for both students and faculty that prohibited anyone from making gestures or statements that “demean” students on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, culture and handicapped condition.
For more than 150 years, Wisconsin taxpayers have invested in our public colleges and universities, producing an enduring resource that benefits every Wisconsin family and the whole state economy. Today, that cherished resource faces critical challenges and change.
Departments within Wisconsin?s taxpayer-funded public universities and technical colleges organized a conference that brought together radical, left-leaning groups to promote labor activism and call for the end of capitalism.
Question: How do you get something done in Washington when the Congress seems bound and determined to do nothing? (Black is a adjunct professor of urban and regional planning at UW-Madison.)
Here?s yet another example of why we?d all be a lot safer if state legislators stayed home, which if we didn?t pay them so much they would have to do. (Commentary on WiscNet issue.)
In their meeting last month, some members of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents lamented that the state Legislature was micromanaging the board.
Noted: This is the last stop on my annual win-a-trip journey, in which I take a student on a reporting trip to the developing world. The winner, Erin Luhmann of the University of Wisconsin, and I hope to shine a bit more light on the continuing slaughter in Darfur ? and on the courage and resilience of the survivors.
Noted: When I first traveled through West Africa, as a student backpacker more than 30 years ago, I was haunted by the beggars disabled by blindness, leprosy and polio. Now I?m on my annual win-a-trip journey with a university student, Erin Luhmann of the University of Wisconsin, and she is encountering a fundamentally improved landscape than the one I saw when I was her age.
The University of Wisconsin System?s decision to drop its Internet service provider could lead ot increased Internet costs for school districts, libraries and other government entities across the state.
Next time you?re watching a college graduation, as you look out over the sea of caps and gowns, make sure you notice the ball and chain most graduates are wearing as they march onstage to receive their diplomas. That?s student loan debt, which at over $1 trillion tops credit card debt in the U.S. today. The average burden is $28,000, but add in their credit cards and they?re graduating with an average of $35,000 in debt. It?s no wonder that people who?ve paid off their student loan debt are 36 percent more likely to own homes than those who haven?t, according to new research by the One Wisconsin Now Institute and Progress Now.
Research by UW-Madison’s Dominique Brossard, Dietram A. Scheufele and Sara Yeo shows that scientists who interact more frequently with journalists on Twitter have higher academic impact (using h-index) than peers, as do scientists whose work was mentioned on Twitter.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has requested that the state Legislature grant it an exemption from Wisconsin?s Open Records Law.
Gov. Walker says he will veto a budget amendment crafted by ham-handed GOP members of the Joint Finance Committee that would have kicked the non-profit Center for Investigative Journalism out of its UW-Madison campus office space and obstructed its relationships with Journalism school faculty.
On May 14th and 15th, the UW-Madison Global Health Institute and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds engaged with the Dalai Lama and an interdisciplinary group of global thought leaders to explore the potential contributions of mindfulness meditation to sustainable global health.
Once upon a time, we were told that Wisconsin was all about job creation.?Wisconsin is open for business,? said the bumper stickers, the signs on the Wisconsin-Illinois border, the press releases, the elected officials and the actions of state government since January 2011.
Most, if not all, of us have been to conferences, workshops and seminars where the topic of ?millennials? (those born between 1983 and 2010) has been addressed at great length, generally by way of a lecture of some sort, with PowerPoint slides citing data indicating that today?s generation of college students is the laziest, least motivated, least socialized and most self-involved generation the Earth has ever seen.
Early this week, I awoke to learn that University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism student Mario Koran had won a prestigious scholarship named for a brave and talented young journalist who died last year while reporting in Mexico City.
THUMBS DOWN: Among the budget-cutting items approved in Wednesday?s pre-dawn voting by the Republican-dominated Joint Finance Committee was a motion that costs the state?s taxpayers almost nothing: The eviction of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism from UW-Madison facilities and a ban on UW employees working for or with the organization.
Republicans? bid to cut the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism off from the state?s flagship university made me sad ? and not because the award-winning center puts out a quality product at a time when traditional news organizations face increasing difficulties.
There are, however, accelerator programs that are trying to change that. One program that I?m intimately familiar with, given my ties to UW-Madison, is called gener8tor and it is launching its third class of startup companies. The program is based in Madison, Wisconsin and is drawing companies from Austin, Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, and the Twin cities.
