Wisconsin’s 13 public universities can now develop three-year bachelor’s degree programs — but it could be a while before any appear at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I know there are some other UW institutions that are exploring that as a possibility. We have not had discussions here at Madison about that,” Allison La Tarte, UW-Madison’s vice provost and chief data and analytics officer, said at a recent campus meeting.
In a 2025 working paper, researchers from UW-Madison and the University of Southern California studied two decades of records of Wisconsinites who received food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the most common way an employee qualifies for the tax credit. Researchers compared SNAP recipients who were eligible for the credit with similar recipients who weren’t.
Wisconsin currently has 274 licensed hemp growers, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Last November, that number was 470.
The decline could be due to people waiting to see how the law plays out and if the loophole will close or not, said Shelby Ellison, an agricultural professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It might be clearer in another month how many people reapply for licenses through the USDA.
UW-Madison Data Science Institute associate professor Anna Haensch raised concerns with the potential electrical demands of data centers. In 2024, Wisconsin’s peak demand was 14.6 gigawatts, and the Wisconsin Policy Forum expects it to increase about 17 gigawatts by 2030.
Additionally, Haensch emphasized the need to separate hyperscale data centers from the broader cultural narrative surrounding artificial intelligence.
“Connecting data centers so explicitly to AI has made these projects almost untenable,” Haensch said, noting that AI is often framed in apocalyptic terms.
“The siting study includes looking at nuclear energy systems, anything from similar to today’s reactors that are operating to a variety of advanced reactor concepts, including microreactors and other smaller reactors, as well as fusion energy systems in the future,” said nuclear engineering professor and department Chair Paul Wilson.
Eighteen of the 700 companies on Forbes’ “Best Large Employers” 2026 ranking were headquartered in Wisconsin. Here are the businesses that made the list:
5. University of Wisconsin-Madison (rank No. 251; Madison)
“It’s going to hang in that $18 to $19 per hundredweight price for 2026. It doesn’t look like it’s going to rebound very strong this year,” said Aerica Bjurstrom, a regional dairy educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension. “Everybody has a different breakeven point; that’s not breakeven for a lot of dairy producers. It’s going to be a tough year.”
Kelly Sheffield has a simple philosophy written on the walls of the Wisconsin volleyball locker room: When you’re at Wisconsin, championships are the expectation.
“We’re also trying to compete for championships. And we got that written downstairs in our locker room,” Sheffield said. “When you’re here at Wisconsin, that is the expectation, and that we’re all in it and it energizes all of us. We’re all in it together.”
Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said this race is drawing less money and attention than recent cycles, in part because the ideological balance of the court is not at stake this time.
“It looks this year like at least some conservatives have kind of thrown in the towel and have said this is not a race that we’re likely to win. So they’re really putting their efforts into the fall election, especially in the governor’s race behind Tom Tiffany,” Burden said.
The Milwaukee School of Engineering came out on top, which apparently did not sit well with the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Two UW-Madison economists dove into earnings data by program. Their recent report, “Degrees of Deception,” found their university came out on top for the most majors of any Wisconsin school. But this point of pride was obscured in the overall rankings because the university offers some lower salary-producing programs that MSOE doesn’t offer, such as music and social work.
The 2026 report is an update to the group’s more comprehensive 2021 assessment of climate change impacts on Wisconsin. Formed in 2007, the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts is a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
The visit follows a partnership announcement between the Public Service Commission and UW’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics to study nuclear energy opportunities in the state.
Inside the University of Wisconsin Nuclear Reactor Tuesday morning, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers peered over the shoulders of student operator Nick Tierney, a senior majoring in nuclear engineering, to eye the array of instrumentation on the reactor control panel, then climbed the stairs to look down into the reactor’s cooling pool.
Name and likeness of college athletes
The bill, if signed into law, would formalize rules around name, image and likeness opportunities for college athletes in the state while providing taxpayer funding for athletic facility maintenance.
UW-Madison, the one power-conference athletic department in the University of Wisconsin System, would receive $14.6 million of taxpayer money annually for debt service for maintaining its athletic facilities. UW-Milwaukee would receive $200,000 for debt service and maintenance for the Klotsche Center, and UW-Green Bay would receive $200,000 for debt service for its athletic facilities.
“They don’t solve the long-run problem of higher input costs and low prices; they are a Band-Aid to get us through this short-term problem,” said Paul Mitchell, the director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Agriculture professor and economist Steven Deller, also of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a similar view.
“We’re hemorrhaging thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and they’re giving us pennies,” Deller said, adding that farmers want “fair markets” and a “level playing field.”
Ignite Wisconsin’s grant of nearly $800K to the Wisconsin Fusion Energy Coalition will help push Wisconsin as a national hub for fusion energy.
Gov. Tony Evers, along with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), announced Thursday that the coalition, led by 5 Lakes Institute and UW-Madison’s fusion research work, will “accelerate startup formation, supply chain development, and community outreach in a sector projected to reach nearly $3 trillion by 2080.”
Taxpayers, the University of Wisconsin is desperate for your help. Athletic director Chris McIntosh made that perfectly clear last week while backing a bill that is making its way through the state Assembly.
How exactly will the $14.6 million McIntosh wants annually from the state — no, he needs from the state — be put to use as part of Assembly Bill 1034? Silly people of Wisconsin, that’s not for you to know.
State utility regulators and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are partnering to explore potential nuclear energy projects in Wisconsin.
UW-Madison and the Public Service Commission will conduct a siting study to evaluate the suitability of various sites and the impact of projects on local economies. The study will also look at different reactor technologies, including both traditional nuclear power, advanced small modular reactors and fusion energy.
Taxpayers, the University of Wisconsin is desperate for your help. Athletic director Chris McIntosh made that perfectly clear last week while backing a bill that is making its way through the state Assembly.
University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty are raising concerns over new workload requirements set to begin next fall that were passed as part of Wisconsin’s latest state budget negotiations.
The University of Wisconsin athletic department traditionally has been self-supporting financially, but that could change under a bill going through the state Assembly. Wisconsin would get $14.6 million annually from the state toward athletics facilities debt service under a measure that also would codify in state law name, image and likeness policies already in place at the school.
As the current legislative session wraps up, the odds that a UW-Madison program that recovers the remains of missing-in-action soldiers will secure state aid are shrinking.
In moves they described as efforts to make the state’s higher education system more meritocratic and safe for conservative students, Assembly Republicans voted Thursday to change eligibility for certain financial aid programs, and make it easier to sue universities for free speech violations.
UW-Madison is looking for an additional $14.6 million from taxpayers annually to maintain its athletics facilities.
But the state’s flagship public university also wants to ensure that name, image and likeness (NIL) contracts for the student athletes who train in them — and all other Badgers athletes — aren’t viewable by the public. Legislators on the Assembly Committee on State Affairs on Feb. 11 unanimously passed a bill which would exempt NIL contracts and revenue sharing for any UW campus from Wisconsin’s public records law.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents approved new policies that would cautiously ease access for political campaigning in residence halls in their February meeting by allowing greater door-to-door campaigning.
A new $5 million grant is set to bring more mental health professionals to Milwaukee Public Schools.
The U.S. Department of Education awarded MPS the four-year grant to help the district recruit and train school psychologists through partnerships with Alverno College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Republican lawmakers are advancing a bill to restore the ACT requirement as the “predominant” factor in admission to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Universities of Wisconsin has named a temporary successor for UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin.
College of Letters and Science Dean Eric Wilcots will serve as interim chancellor starting May 17 as Mnookin begins her departure to lead Columbia University, UW system President Jay Rothman announced Wednesday.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Wednesday over the legality of a grant program aimed at helping students of color attend college.
The case dates back to 2021, when a group of Wisconsin taxpayers — including some from Madison — filed a lawsuit in Jefferson County Circuit Court, arguing the state’s Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant program unlawfully discriminates based on race and national origin.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s continued and growing excellence will depend on either more state support or more flexibility, the school’s leader said Thursday.
“Now look, both would be best of all. But we deeply need, at a minimum, one or the other,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin told the Board of Regents, which oversees UW-Madison and Wisconsin’s 12 other state universities, at a campus meeting.
A bill that would provide funding to a program that helps identify the remains of missing-in-action service members is in limbo after an Assembly committee put off a vote Wednesday due to concerns by Republican lawmakers that Gov. Tony Evers would use his partial veto on the measure.
The University of Wisconsin Missing-In-Action (MIA) Recovery and Identification project, which was started in 2015 at the state’s flagship campus, works to further the recovery and identification of missing-in-action American service members. Those working on the project include researchers, students, veterans, alumni and volunteers who conduct research, recovery and biological identification. The program is partnered with the federal Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) on the work and has acted as a model for DPAA, which now partners with more than 50 other academic and nonprofit institutions to work on MIA identifications.
After concerns were raised about spending on DEI, the University of Wisconsin-Madison shuttered a department but kept most of the staff and their titles working on equity issues, an investigation by The Center Square found.
The former Division of Diversity, Equity and Education Achievement – which employed about 100 people who earned more than $7 million annually – had been mired in financial mismanagement and attacks from Republicans before the university closed it last year.
An audit found that the university had no grasp of its total diversity spending and whether it was effective, and auditors identified problematic employee bonuses, travel and other expenses in the division.
Health officials confirmed a second measles case in Wisconsin earlier this week — this time in Madison — and one local expert says there’s a reason to be concerned but clear ways to stay safe and healthy.
The Cap Times spoke with Dr. Joseph McBride, an infectious disease specialist at UW Health, after public health officials reported a University of Wisconsin-Madison student contracted measles, likely through international travel, and potentially exposed people on campus.
Tensions rose in discussion over a bipartisan bill that would require state agencies, including the University of Wisconsin System, to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism for any “law, ordinance or policy” when evaluating possible discriminatory intent at a Jan. 28 public hearing.
Daniel Hummel, a research fellow with the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on U.S. relations with Israel, said there has been increased “antisemitic rhetoric around campus” since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.
Dane County health officials continue to contact hundreds of people who may have been exposed to measles after a University of Wisconsin–Madison student tested positive for the highly contagious virus.
Public Health Madison & Dane County posted a growing list of exposure locations on its website, including several UW-Madison buildings such as Union South, the Genetics and Psychology buildings, multiple Madison Metro bus routes, Qdoba on Park Street and the Waisman Center.
While there are still two months to go, it’s possible the race will stay muted because the stakes are different with no Supreme Court majority on the line, said Howard Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Neither outcome will change liberal control of the court, though because the winner will replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, it could extend guaranteed liberal control until at least 2030.
Minimum-wage hikes — depending on the size — can bring a mix of positive and negative economic consequences, according to Callie Freitag, assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Social Work.
“The good thing is that earnings would go up for workers. Employers would raise wages and be able to pay workers more,” Freitag said. “But the money to pay workers more has to come from somewhere.”
“Because it’s not dependent on the wind or the sun, nuclear energy operates whenever we want it, pretty much,” said Paul Wilson, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But even if we have to shut it down for refueling, that is very, very infrequent. Nuclear power plants today around the country typically operate for 18 months without shutting off.”
Leaders in Wisconsin agriculture are warning the state’s farmers to brace for another tough year for trade and market conditions.
The discussion at the annual Wisconsin Agricultural Outlook Forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focused both on the economic hardships weighing on farmers and what some producers are doing to try to get ahead.
The current executive director of Saint Louis University’s Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship will join the University of Wisconsin-Madison to lead the university’s first entrepreneurship center.
Lewis Sheats will become the Associate Vice Chancellor for Entrepreneurship and the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Hub on Feb. 2, a Jan. 20 release announced.
The Trump endorsement cuts both ways, said Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Elections Research Center. On the plus side, Tiffany doesn’t have to worry about draining his resources on a primary fight, and can immediately direct his focus on the general election.
The downside? Tiffany is now tied to Trump, whose popularity is suffering, and the president’s party traditionally struggles in midterm elections, Burden noted.
“He’s going to have to negotiate expressing his own identity as a candidate versus trying to take advantage of the enthusiasm that Trump voters have (for Trump) in particular, and to get them out,” Burden said.
Within UW-Madison’s Department of Food Science, Professor Bradley Bolling has pioneered research of anthocyanins, natural pigments responsible for the vibrant hues in fruits like cranberries.
“We want to understand how the pigments in cranberry are stabilized,” Bolling said.
Bolling developed a patented process using lecithin, an emulsifier, to extract natural pigments from cranberries without using alcohol or acetone. This makes the process safer and more environmentally sustainable.
Wisconsin Republican lawmakers want to limit the University of Wisconsin System’s academic and research collaboration with six countries amid concerns over national security and foreign influence in education.
The bill, which passed the Assembly on Jan. 22, prohibits study abroad, dual degree programs and research collaborations with China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Qatar. While there are currently no UW-Madison programs in four of the targeted countries, the university has three study abroad programs in China and one flagship program in Russia.
“In certain neighborhoods, perhaps in Atlanta or Philadelphia or Chicago, maybe you’re reaching a much higher market saturation point,” said Kurt Paulsen, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who studies urban planning. “I’ve not seen any evidence of any even modest market penetration of that product in Dane County and Madison.”
When Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin took over at the University of Wisconsin-Madison four years ago, she entered an unwinnable situation.
Republican legislators immediately criticized her as an out-of-touch coastal elite, and she was forced to handle many of the issues that would plague her term as chancellor — debates over anti-semitism and how campuses could support free speech while upholding an environment inclusive of all students.
A growing number of states, including Illinois, prohibit openly carrying “long guns” — meaning rifles and shotguns — at protests. Those rules aim to prevent armed confrontations between protesters, counterprotesters and law enforcement, said University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor John Gross. “What (law enforcement) don’t want,” he said, “is a situation where you have two armed groups facing off against one another with the police in between them.”
Andrew Reschovsky, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, said Wisconsin has a particularly complex system of school funding.
“The legislature said we are not going to increase state aid at all, not by one penny of general aid,” Reschovsky said.
Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said Madison’s argument is “conflating two different things.”
“The Legislature has, in these absentee voting statutes, made clear that it considers absentee voting to be a privilege, in that absentee voting as a method is not constitutionally required, and that the Legislature can impose some additional procedures on absentee voting that it maybe couldn’t impose on in-person voting,” said Godar. “That privileged language does not mean that when you vote absentee, you don’t have a right to have your vote counted.”
Statewide, school enrollment data tells a similar story: throughout the 2000s and 2010s, enrollment in suburban school districts increased, while rural school enrollment continually declined, according to Sarah Kemp, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Applied Population Lab. Urban school districts, including Milwaukee, saw relatively steady enrollment through the 2010s, but the pandemic brought a sharp decline in student enrollment in most Wisconsin cities.
“There’s maybe not housing available for those young families to move into, or maybe the opportunities aren’t there for young families to find employment, and that may then show up in the school districts with declining enrollment,” Kemp said.
Wisconsin legislators haven’t directed a ton of their attention to higher education issues during the current legislative session, lobbyist Jack O’Meara said.
“It just seems generally that it’s not at the top of the list of items that are being discussed … so I don’t see a whole lot of bills moving,” said O’Meara, who advocates on behalf of faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison through an organization called PROFS.
Gov. Tony Evers told The Daily Cardinal in an interview Wednesday he is in the process of negotiating with the Legislature what will be done with the state’s budget surplus, but does not have a specific answer whether the University of Wisconsin System will receive any additional funding.
From 2020 to 2024, preliminary figures show the state has seen reports of 495 manure spills and incidents, according to Kevin Erb. He’s the manager of the Conservation Professional Training Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, which trains manure applicators. Erb did not have figures on the amount of manure spilled, saying releases are often estimated.
Demographer David Egan-Robertson kicked things off in an interview with “Wisconsin Today,” looking at the big trends in the state’s population. Egan-Robertson has followed this story for years in his work with the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Last year, just as she was finishing a teacher residency program through the University of Wisconsin-Madison, federal funding for the project was cut by the Trump administration.
“So we were in the spring semester and we were all like, are we going to be able to continue?” Lind said. “Are we going to still be able to get our teaching license? Are we going to have to pay this back?”
Consolidation continues to be the biggest factor shaping the number of farms in the state, according to Steven Deller, agricultural and applied economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“If you’re in your mid-60s, it just doesn’t make sense to be operating a dairy farm with 150 cows,” he said. “That’s demanding work, that’s really hard labor, and you hit a certain point where you just say, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’”
The bill is “is a Band-Aid to stop the bleeding,” said Ryan Poe-Gavlinski, director of UW-Madison’s Restraining Order and Survivor Advocacy Clinic. She said it could fill a critical funding gap until lawmakers figure out a long-term solution.
But the number of victims in need of services is continually on the rise. Wisconsin broke records for domestic violence-related deaths in 2024.
“We’re going to always have victims who need assistance, and there’s just not enough people to help the victims,” Poe-Gavlinski said.
Political experts have said it’s possible, but not likely, congressional candidates will run on new maps this year.
“I think it’s not impossible, but a court would really have to give dedicated attention to the case and prioritize it over others,” Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last month. “There would just have to be a kind of rapid-fire set of events to get through all those steps in time for the 2026 cycle.”
Still, University of Wisconsin Law School professor and co-director of the State Democracy Research Initiative Rob Yablon noted, “it’s conceivable” the plaintiffs in the case brought by Elias Law Group will push for a speedy process. The plaintiffs’ attorney, Julie Zuckerbrod, argued during a scheduling conference that the case could in fact be decided in time for the 2026 election.
Last year, around 300,000 Wisconsin residents qualified for and used the enhanced subsidies, said Dan Sacks, associate professor of risk and insurance with the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It’s just going to be a lot harder for many people to get coverage,” he said.
According to experts, the average person who works for tips could save up to $1,300 on their taxes.
“But in practice, $25,000 in tips is a lot of tips to be receiving, and so very few people are going to find themselves in that situation,” said Ross Milton, an associate professor at the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “Some people who even who receive tips, might not really be saving anything because they may not really have too many people who receive tips, actually don’t have enough income to pay a significant amount of income taxes.”
The other proposed amendment would prohibit governmental entities from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in public employment, public education, public contracting or public administration, according to the resolution memo.
Bill author David Murphy, R-Hortonville, said the proposed amendment was meant to bring “merit, fairness and equity back to the state of Wisconsin.”
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty filed a civil rights complaint against the University of Wisconsin-Madison on behalf of conservative students on campus.
The firm alleges the school is offering about two dozen race-based scholarships. WILL is asking the U.S. Department of Education to investigate “race-based practices” on behalf of its client, the Young America’s Foundation.
