Whew. College applications are in and hopefuls can refocus. If you’re like me, you submitted the FAFSA (Free Application For Federal Student Aid) form in January. It’s as easy as one, two ââ?¬â? 43.
Robert Myers teaches cultural anthropology at Alfred University in New York.
The University of Wisconsin and the University of Michigan have this rather dubious distinction in common: Their women’s basketball teams aren’t very good.
In fact, they’re awful.
The Badgers (11-17 overall, 5-11 in the Big Ten) and the Wolverines (6-22, 0-16) have another thing in common: When they were searching for a head coach three years ago, neither Wisconsin nor Michigan bothered to interview Kevin Borseth.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents recently voted to raise the salary ranges of certain UW senior executive positions. The regents made the move with an eye squarely on the higher salaries given for similar positions at many peer institutions, fearing the compensation gap would hinder UW�s competitiveness in attracting top-notch administrators to Wisconsin.
Just pick: Pro-evolution or intelligent design. For some, the answer may be a clear-cut decision for one or the other. For others, the choice may be a bit more complicated.
Thanks to the foresight of Rep. Terese Berceau, Sen. Spencer Black and a group of UW scientists, Wisconsin has an opportunity to prove why it�s a national leader in the sciences.
A few weeks back I asked here whether the Republicans in the state Legislature knew that the University of Wisconsin-Madison is getting high marks from national publications for helping new businesses get started.
There are some ideologues in the Legislature, after all, who assume that the UW-Madison is nothing more than a breeding ground for bed-wetting liberals, long-haired malcontents, anti-Christians or whatever else is in their craw at any given moment. So if they found the UW to actually be pro-business, that surely would touch their good, Republican hearts.
Institutions of higher education should do a better job teaching students, making sure that they graduate with rigorous intellectual skills. But the federal government, with its dubious track record in management and efficiency, particularly in education, should be prevented from making matters worse.
….The recent decision of UW-Madison student journalists to reprint a cartoon that depicted the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a lit fuse pitted the right of free speech against reasonable restraint. When Muslim students on the UW campus expressed outrage, calling it a racist act, The Capital Times sided with the Badger Herald’s editors.
Like The Capital Times, I, too, do not believe the publication of the controversial cartoon was necessarily a racist act, but I also do not believe printing it served the common good.
Controversy has beset the Badger Herald campus newspaper for publishing an editorial accompanied by a cartoon of Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb. Critics have hurled several accusations at the Herald, including questions about the timing of the free speech act, the motivations of the editorial board, and the claim that the board could have achieved its purpose by describing the image rather than publishing it.
….We must resist the idea that the expression of a political idea, or a statement of criticism, or satire, should be subject to sanction or prohibited simply because one group or another finds that idea, criticism or satire offensive.
New UW football coach Bret Bielema has taken enough grief and says it’s time for the final word on his controversial Hawkeye tattoo.
Like everyone who played football for Dave McClain at the University of Wisconsin, Randy Wright was shocked when McClain died from a heart attack at age 48.
But 20 years later, McClain’s passing resonates even more deeply with Wright than it did in 1986.
Controversy has beset The Badger Herald for publishing an editorial accompanied by a cartoon of Mohammed wearing a turban shaped as bomb. Critics have hurled several accusations at the Herald, including questions about the timing of the speech act, the motivations of the editorial board and the claim that the board could have achieved its purpose by describing the image rather than publishing it.
Colorado squeezed its state finances into a straitjacket called the taxpayer bill of rights in 1992. TABOR, a constitutional amendment limiting the growth in public revenue, worked even better than advertised. Government shrunk drastically.
There were side effects, however – fiscal and political. First, services – health care, roads and bridges, schools and universities – worsened. Next, for the first time in 30 years, the Republican Legislature turned Democratic.
Two politicians believe university administrators should respond to a ââ?¬Å?higher callingââ?¬Â rather than a higher paycheck in serving the University. State Reps. Robin Vos, R-Caledonia, and Stephen Nass, R-Whitewater, have introduced two separate bills that suggest capping state-funded administrative salaries.
Yet, public education administrators already responded to a higher calling: leadership in higher education. For this civil service, top administrators deserve competitive compensation supplied by the state, not private donors.
Last Thursday, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents� Business, Finance and Audit Committee assembled to discuss lowering nonresident student tuition and adjusting UW executive salaries. The committee voted and concluded 5-1 that the tuition decrease will take effect at every UW campus except UW-Madison for the 2006-07 school year and made a unanimous decision to raise pay ranges for top administrative positions that will take be effective July 1, 2006. On Monday, Rep. Stephen Nass, R-Whitewater, announced plans to introduce a bill that would limit the arranged salary increases proposed by the Board.
The two issues here reflect very different subjects. The resolution on tuition will benefit UW schools in more ways than one. First off, the draw to UW schools will increase for out-of-state students while not decreasing the number of in-state students.
The University of Wisconsin is competitive in pretty much everything. Our academics, athletic teams and even our party habits are ranked nationally. It�s about time our campus begins to compete with other universities nationwide in yet another category: campus development.
We lack adequate dorm space for incoming students, apartment space for older students, retail stores that make life more convenient for students, parking, reliable transportation and a centrally located health center. With class sizes growing each year, UW has no choice but to develop the campus and the surrounding areas to not only cater to the studentsââ?¬â?¢ wishes but also make UW a more aesthetically pleasing place ââ?¬â? or simply one that looks like it has finally left the 1970s behind.
Entrepreneurial? The People’s Republic of Madison, entrepreneurial?
Yes, argue some people close to Wisconsin’s growing biotech industry: The reason research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has led to a slew of new companies is that the university and the community are congenial to entrepreneurs. The rest of Wisconsin can take a lesson from that.
“Our policies,” says Phil Sobocinski, assistant director of the UW Office of Corporate Relations, “are all entrepreneur-friendly.”
They’ve been to Ireland and China and the thoughts of creative class guru Richard Florida, and Milwaukee’s leaders are urgent that we need more brainpower.
People in Wisconsin’s largest city are way behind on getting degrees, our graduates leave and our economy’s in danger of looking at Mississippi’s taillights.
Well, here we go again. The taxpayers bill of rights, or some form of it, is back on the table in the Wisconsin Legislature.
While I have serious problems with such legislation in general and am sure that it will have negative consequences for both taxpayers and state and local government, I am most frustrated with the narrow scope of the discussion surrounding the debate.
Rep. Jeff Wood argues for the need for constitutional revenue limits. Quoted is Andrew Reschovsky, professor of public affairs and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a critic of TABOR.
The president’s ââ?¬Å?broad-gauged initiativeââ?¬Â to teach Americans through language training to be more culturally aware of exotic countries ââ?¬â? in order to spread democracy there ââ?¬â? would distort the market for specialty linguists and be a waste of tax dollars.
(Ivan Eland is director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at The Independent Institute, a think tank based in Washington.)
Students are flocking to newly formed Arabic classes on high school and college campuses. But in the best programs, only 25% of first-year students reach the third-year level. In a majority of college programs, students have no choice but to stop after the first year because their university doesn’t offer a second year.
At the Madison Greyhound station, riders frequently play checkers as they wait in the depot. In lieu of checkers pieces, white riders square themselves on the west side of the station, while metaphorical black checkers follow suit, taking seats on the east side.
It seems like too often the curricula and teaching methods of today�s university professors are selectively critiqued by supervisors who have little insight into what constitutes the appropriate content and atmosphere of a college classroom. The raging debate over academic freedom has spawned an influx in public pressure to manipulate teachers� coursework for means of centrism. Cries of political bias in the classroom have caused many lecturers to become virtually paranoid in what they say and how they say it.
The Republican legislators who find great sport in bashing the University of Wisconsin ought to take a look at a column in this month’s Inc. magazine, one of the nation’s leading business journals.
The Steve Nashes, Ron Kreibichs and Robert Cowleses of the world might be interested in knowing that the UW does a remarkable job translating its research and patents into business development and job creation, something that’s usually near and dear to a Republican’s heart. But they’d rather punish the school over social and personnel policies that don’t fit their own prejudices.
Did the Irish read the Wisconsin Blue Ribbon Report on Jobs for the 21st Century, published back in 1997?
The strategic blueprint laid out almost a decade ago sounds like a carbon copy of the strategy that has propelled Ireland to the top of the prosperity pyramid in Europe.
The Irish have been focused. They have beefed up investments in universities. We have been going the other way, except for the BioStar initiative at UW-Madison.
Curiosities column: Produced by University Communications.
There is a school of thought out there that Bret Bielema isn’t the right man to replace Barry Alvarez as football coach at the University of Wisconsin, a belief based almost entirely on the fact that UW’s defense – Bielema’s defense – fell apart last season.
If current trends continue, by 2010 more than 90% of the world’s scientists and engineers will live in Asia, warns the Business Roundtable, which represents the nation’s leading companies. Failing to reverse that trend will result in a ââ?¬Å?slow witheringââ?¬Â of U.S. economic might, the group warns. Strong stuff. And that’s just the beginning of the complaints from the business community.
Glaringly absent from his pep talk were any incentives or enthusiasm for stem-cell research, which shows such promise here in Wisconsin.
Instead, Bush announced his steadfast opposition to “human cloning in all its forms.” What that apparently and unfortunately means is that therapeutic cloning at UW-Madison won’t get federal help. That’s wrong because the technology, involving days-old embryos created by injecting human eggs with a living person’s cell to grow stem cells, can combat terrible disease and afflictions.
….If there’s one thing I’ve learned in 44 years in this business, the quickest way to spread disinformation, gossip and rumors is for public institutions to hold secrets, a fact too often ignored by the otherwise publicity-seeking UW Athletic Department.
Today, we’re giving out awards for bad math, good intentions and bad intentions that look good.
Gov. Jim Doyle wants to promote embryonic stem-cell research in Wisconsin.
In his recent State of the State address, the governor pledged to spend $5 million taxpayer dollars to “find, fund, and recruit” stem-cell companies. He expects high gains for the state in money and prestige, especially at the University of Wisconsin, a major hub of embryonic cell research.
Student speech codes were supposed to be a thing of the past on this campus. But sometimes the causes of repression continue to rear their problematic heads ââ?¬â? often in a different form.
In order to flush a truly humiliating experience out of your system, you need to tear it down, examine it from every angle, give it some context and move on.
Since disciples of the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball team have already razed and analyzed that 62-55 non-conference loss to North Dakota State Saturday at the Kohl Center, here is some context: It was the biggest upset loss, in any major sport, in the modern era of UW sports.
When the search and screen committee for a new provost reported back with a list of three candidates that did not include Virginia Sapiro, an active wound was inflicted upon the University of Wisconsin by denying the most qualified applicant the job that she would so ably perform.
A TREND TOWARD privatization and a shift in spending priorities is putting California’s public colleges and universities at risk of forsaking their mandate to deliver a quality public education to the state’s growing ranks of would-be college students.
Author: Paul Boyer is professor of history emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
When Gov. Doyle announced his “Wisconsin Covenant” to help teenagers go to college, Republicans suspiciously asked how he would pay for it.
Nice touch by new University of Wisconsin football coach Bret Bielema to announce his assistants one at a time. Not only does each new face and resume get enhanced, it puts the program on the front page for days at a time when things are ordinarily quiet. …
Mitch, a 2003 UW-Madison Law School graduate, changed his name during college, legally taking the nickname friends gave him by shortening his former last name Mitchell. “I was an orphan, my father passed away when I was young and my mother got sick and passed away when I was a teen. I finished high school, college and law school on my own.”
Although he worked a mere quarter of the year in Madison, Paul Barrows did much to harm the University of Wisconsin in 2005. The actions of the former vice chancellor for student affairs, who spent last summer embroiled in a high-profile scandal over allegations of inappropriate behavior with a graduate student and coworkers, led more than a few officials in the state Capitol to publicly criticize the school.
If ever a school needed a year to end, it was the University of Wisconsin System in 2005. In what will surely go down as one of the most trying and difficult years in school annals, UW became a personal punching bag for the media, lawmakers and others throughout the state as one sordid scandal after another erupted in headlines throughout the year.
If you have the time and know where to look, you can easily find hundreds of statistics to define the now completed career of Barry Alvarez as University of Wisconsin football coach.
Some are obvious: Alvarez led the Badgers to 118 victories in 16 seasons and had a .520 winning percentage in Big Ten Conference games (65-60-3).
It is true that the United States is losing its advantage in drawing foreign students, but a major point was not stressed enough in USA TODAY’s recent article (ââ?¬Å?USA losing its advantage drawing foreign students,ââ?¬Â News, Jan 6).
(In letters to the editor.)
MADISON ââ?¬â?? The world now knows about Hwang Woo-suk, the South Korean researcher whose stem cell work may have been falsified. It was a confidence-shaking revelation for some who support human embryonic stem cell research, and a gleeful ââ?¬Å?I-told-you-soââ?¬Â opportunity for those who do not.
If thereââ?¬â?¢s a positive side to the alleged research abuses in South Korea, it is the contrast with how stem cell science is conducted elsewhere. Hwangââ?¬â?¢s transgressions support what bona fide researchers in the United States have been saying all along: ââ?¬Å?We operate under clear, ethical rules that may take longer to produce research results, but you can count on those results once theyââ?¬â?¢re announced.ââ?¬Â
Legislation championed by Sen. John McCain to stop physical abuse of prisoners held in U.S. custody around the world was signed into law nine days ago by President Bush. It marks the third time in 30 years that Congress has voted to prohibit torture. Twice before, in 1975 and 1994, investigations of horrific abuse, secret prisons and CIA complicity led to legislation with hidden loopholes — a history we may be about to repeat.
Alfred W. McCoy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror.”
Chairman Dick Wagner said that while the committee has learned that Madison has an official flower, the Babcock hollyhock, no one seems to grow them anymore. The plants were named after famed UW-Madison agricultural chemist Stephen Babcock. You can see photos of the tall, deep- pink flowers on the UW-Madison Web site, but no one seems to know where to find any seeds.
It’s the dawn of a new year, when anything seems possible, even reforming our oldest and worst habits.
MADISON, Wis. — Before I transferred to the University of Wisconsin, I had visited the campus several times to see some of my friends who had made the wise decision to attend college in Madison.
David Cox, professor of biochemistry:
Even though the conclusion seemed pre-ordained, it was with no small measure of relief that I read about Judge John Jones’s decision banning the inclusion of intelligent design in the science classrooms of the school district in Dover, Pa. Unfortunately, I know this one decision won’t end the conflict, but it is nevertheless a welcome development.
Christmas is past, and the new year soon to arrive. It’s time for a long winter’s nap and some comforting dreams about how the datelines of 2006 might read. Wake me up Jan. 2, when the Badgers play. Please save some eggnog.
Hmmm, let’s see …
….MADISON – UW United, a new organization comprising University of Wisconsin System alumni, announced today a statewide effort to build support for Wisconsin’s higher education system. It’s time to end decades of erosion in support for the system, organizers said, promising to target legislators who have sought to dismantle the system.
Lawyer jokes aren’t just good for a laugh — they can tell us much about the state of the legal profession. In researching my new book, “Lowering the Bar: Lawyer Jokes and Legal Culture,” I found that the preeminent subject of jokes set in large law firms is the tension between older partners and younger associates.
My various mailboxes are not just filled with bills, electronic spam, catalogues, press releases and the stray holiday card these days.
They also are crammed with sarcasm, ridicule, anger, profanity and protest, all in the name of readers blowing off some steam.
Jacqueline King is a researcher who carefully sifts data for the American Council on Education in search of trends that colleges and universities might find helpful. One recent discovery jumped out: Over the past eight years, the percentage of middle-class males on campus shifted dramatically downward. Even more surprising, the sharpest drop occurred among white males.
….If nothing else, the Christmas card tradition seems to force us to renew old friendships, get up to date on growing families and, yes, sometimes hear sad news as we all get a year older. The memories those cards induce are precious.
I can see it on the nightly news:
An army of middle-class people marches on the student neighborhood south of Regent Street. They’re armed with paint scrapers and floor sanders and wearing tool belts and Menards’ hats. And they’re chanting: “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Student housing’s got to go!”
Since UW-Madison planners first talked about a Workforce Housing Initiative to encourage employees to buy and rehabilitate dilapidated student housing in the Vilas and Greenbush areas, they’ve been swamped by people who want to sign up.
The Man of the House was reading the morning sports section when he mashed the paper in his lap and yelled for his wife.
“Honey, get in here,” he said. “Hurry.”
A weary figure, carrying an overloaded clothes basket, appeared in the doorway of the adjacent laundry room.
UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley made a bold step toward guaranteeing worker rights to collectively bargain in the 3,300 factories around the world that produce UW apparel by announcing Tuesday the university�s plan to begin a pilot program endorsed by the United Students Against Sweatshops. The program will require companies producing officially licensed apparel products to purchase 25 percent of their goods from factories that allow a union.
Column by Adam Edelman, a senior at UW-Madison and an editorial page intern for the Wisconsin State Journal.
