The Board of Regents unanimously passed a 2027-2033 budget plan and biennial 2027-2029 budget request Aug. 20, requesting funding for a new University of Wisconsin-Madison residence hall and a two-year tuition freeze for in-state students across the UW System.
The Board of Regents unanimously approved a 2027-29 biennial budget request which included a University of Wisconsin-Madison demolition plan for the Mosse Humanities Building with a proposed budget of $463.5 million.
The Universities of Wisconsin are proposing a two-year tuition freeze beginning in 2027 if state lawmakers approve a $190 million increase on top of the UW System’s $730 million budget request.
Jon Levine, dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, told WPR that the college is currently maxed out on how many new students it can accept each year due to space constraints, but he is hopeful that the program will be able to increase enrollment in the near future.
Wisconsin, best known for its cheese curds, beer, bratwurst and dairy, is in the midst of building out a new industry: nuclear fusion.
“I think that the real concern is that the clock is ticking,” said Derek Clinger, with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. “Really, any last minute change to mail voting procedures this close to the election could create a lot of chaos and confusion for election administrators and for voters.”
A Monday emergency opinion from the high court paused a lower court ruling that blocked parts of Trump’s March executive order directing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to create state lists of U.S. citizens eligible to vote. The order also directs the U.S. Postal Service to prevent mail-in ballots from going to anyone not on those lists.
Hospital costs in Wisconsin are about 26% higher than in Illinois, according to a new study comparing the two states, but a hospital trade association questions the report’s methods and disputes its conclusions.
The reason for the difference isn’t certain, says the report’s co-author, University of Wisconsin economist Anthony Lo Sasso. But he says it could be because most metro areas in the state have one dominant hospital and healthcare system.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison would receive an additional $260 million in state funding, and in-state students would experience a tuition freeze if state lawmakers greenlight the UW system’s budget plans for the next two years.
The Wisconsin budget provides $14.6 million for athletic facility debt payments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and $200,000 each for the Milwaukee and Green Bay campuses.
“None of that state funds technically would go toward student athletes,” said Republican state Rep. Alex Dallman, who sponsored the legislation.
The Universities of Wisconsin Regent President Kyle Weatherly and UWs President Renee Wachter announced Monday that the Universities of Wisconsin will propose to freeze tuition rates for 2027-2029.
The pledge, called the 4-Year Tuition Pledge, is a main focus of the UW’s 2027-2029 budget proposal.
The Pledge proposes freezing tuition for the 2027-2029 biennium, provided the state invests $190 million to support the cost of the freeze and other operating needs that preserve educational quality, officials said.
The University of Wisconsin System is asking state lawmakers for $190 million in additional funding in order to freeze tuition for two years and cap the increase at the rate of inflation for the two next years.
The proposal is part of the university system’s biennial budget request from state lawmakers. UW leadership recently asked for an additional $90 million of funding to use toward training 35,000 new healthcare professionals over a 10-year span.
Universities of Wisconsin leaders announced a proposal Monday, Aug. 17, to freeze tuition through the 2027-29 budget cycle, provided the state invests $190 million to cover the cost of the freeze and other operating needs.
Under the plan, called the 4-Year Tuition Pledge, the university system would also commit to keeping tuition increases at or below the rate of inflation for the following two years.
Wisconsin’s public university system is emphasizing affordability, access and forward motion in its 2027-29 budget request, seeking a $730 million increase in funding from the state Legislature and governor ahead of November elections.
Universities of Wisconsin leaders are proposing to seek an additional $730 million in aid over the next two years with an offer to freeze tuition over that period — if the state comes up with the money to cover the lost revenue.
UW Board of Regents President Kyle Weatherly and interim system President Renee Wachter said yesterday if state lawmakers take them up on the offer for $190 million to fund the freeze, the system would also keep tuition increases at or under the rate of inflation for the 2029-31 biennium.
The Universities of Wisconsin is again requesting money to demolish and relocate UW-Madison’s Mosse Humanities Building and to build new residence halls.
The Humanities Building project tops the list of major requests included in the system’s $2 billion capital budget request for 2027-29, released Monday. The request seeks $463.5 million to cover the demolition of the entire building and a portion of the Art Lofts facility next to the Kohl Center, which houses a gallery for student and faculty artwork, though $46.8 million would be covered by donations.
The Universities of Wisconsin is pledging to freeze tuition for two years and create thousands more workers as part of a $730 million two-year budget request it plans to submit to the state Legislature.
The request, released Monday, seeks to “address the state’s needs,” UW system Interim President Renée Wachter said.
Over the last few budget cycles, the UW system’s budget efforts have had mixed success, sometimes leading to significant increases in state funding and at other times resulting in hard-fought negotiations that yielded little.
“The absence of endorsements from AOC and Sanders was a bit of a warning sign because they had in fact been involved in state-level races elsewhere. Their backing would have given Hong more legitimacy as a candidate and made her platform seem more grounded,” UW-Madison Political Science Professor Barry Burden said in an email.
While much attention has been given to a gubernatorial race that turned rapidly from sleepy to tumultuous in its final weeks, Democrats emerged from Tuesday’s nailbiter primary election with a continued focus on flipping enough legislative seats to wield political power they’ve lacked for more than 15 years in Wisconsin.
Tuesday’s Democratic gubernatorial primary win by David Crowley was a big surprise.
The Milwaukee County Executive narrowly defeated democratic socialist Francesca Hong. Crowley will face Republican Tom Tiffany Nov. 3.
Hong had a groundswell of grassroots support, while Crowley dropped out of the race in July. At that time, Crowley was behind in the polls.
He jumped back in a week later, after Sara Rodriguez dropped out due financial mismanagement by a campaign staffer.
UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden spoke with WUWM’s Ann-Elise Henzl about Crowley’s turnaround.
iffany faces his own headwinds. For one, the party that holds the White House historically struggles in midterm election cycles.
“Tiffany is going to be hampered by that, and Trump is even more unpopular now,” said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden.
Hong caught flak from national media about years-old social media posts about defunding the police and canceling Thanksgiving. Some of the posts were dredged up by Republicans, UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said, as part of their strategy to define Hong as being too liberal. It might have backfired, Burden added, giving moderate voters a reason to look elsewhere and prevent Hong from being their nominee.
Kathy Cramer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Mr. Evers’s influence — even if it came near the end of a long campaign — could have turned voters away from Ms. Hong and toward Mr. Crowley.
“It could just be that there are lots of Democrats who just have an affinity for the guy,” she said of Mr. Evers, who has served two terms as governor. “That could have weighed heavily on their vote.”
Tessa Conroy, associate professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an economic development specialist with UW Extension, told “Wisconsin Today” that rural communities “have been worried about this for a long time.”
“What happens in the gubernatorial primary could have both short-term and long-term consequences for Democrats in Wisconsin and even nationally,” Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center, said.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center director Barry Burden said for Crowley’s argument to take shape, the Wisconsin polling would need to be farther off than polling showed ahead of the Michigan race.
“El-Sayed was leading Stevens by 10 to 15 points in public polling. He won by one point. Crowley’s memo shows he is losing in a standard poll question by an even larger margin, so the polls need to be farther off in Wisconsin for him to be victorious,” Burden said. “Maybe the wilder fluctuations in the Wisconsin primary make it more possible for this kind of error to happen, but it would be substantial at more than 20 points.”
In Wisconsin, a progressive gubernatorial candidate is polling far ahead of the other candidates before the battleground state’s Democratic primary next week.
That was the story in Michigan, too: Polls showed Abdul El-Sayed handily beating Rep. Haley Stevens ahead of Tuesday’s Senate primary — but he had barely edged out a victory by the time the race was called the next morning. Now, some Democrats wonder if the same will come to pass in Wisconsin, where polling has shown state Rep. Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, leading her opponents by double-digit margins for weeks.
As the only veterinary medicine school in the state, UW-Madison is working to recruit rural veterinarians as early as high school.
The program is called Food Animal Veterinary Medical Scholars. Students likely to pursue careers in food-animal veterinary medicine receive guaranteed admission and are placed on track to complete their undergraduate studies within three years.
As early voting gets underway ahead of the Aug. 11 primary, Wisconsin is hurtling toward a gubernatorial matchup between Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist, and Northwoods U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a MAGA Republican.
At the center of this momentum is a deeply collaborative ecosystem. Wisconsin’s universities serve as powerful engines of discovery, with the University of Wisconsin–Madison surpassing $1.7 billion in annual research expenditures. Organizations like the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation help translate that research into real-world impact through patents, licensing, and early-stage funding.
We turn to Bryna Godar, attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and thanks for being here. So I want to just back up a little bit to set those court cases up. It was a 2022 lawsuit where a Waukesha County judge ruled that the elections commission had to rescind its guidance, allowing for the spoiling of ballots. A state appeals court eventually repealed that ruling.
The bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission is warning voters that they shouldn’t buy into prediction markets like Kalshi or Polymarket on the results of a Wisconsin election and then vote in that same race.
That’s because voters could be violating a decades-old Wisconsin statute that carries felony-level consequences – though it doesn’t appear the state has recently enforced it or proactively plans to hunt down lawbreakers.
The upcoming Wisconsin midterms could shift the balance of power in the state Legislature, and the August primaries will determine which candidates voters want to see on the November general election ballot.
Democrats are aiming to flip both the Assembly and Senate in hopes of securing a trifecta in the state government. The party must flip two of the four competitive Senate seats to win a majority. The Assembly is a larger challenge as Democrats must flip five seats to claim a majority for the first time in 16 years.
Employees at Wisconsin’s public universities will get a 2% increase in their wages starting this month, and thousands of faculty members in high-demand fields have received salary raises.
Some of Wisconsin’s justices disagreed with the ruling, but said they were bound by the U.S. Supreme Court’s precedent to strike down the grants. UW-Madison political theory Professor Howard Schweber says it’s important the public understands that nuance.
Wisconsin’s protracted political redistricting fight took two turns in May: a federal court affirmed Wisconsin’s congressional district map and the U.S. Supreme Court further curtailed safeguards that have governed redistricting nationally.
A three-judge panel dismissed a lawsuit in the federal court case that challenged the congressional maps for Wisconsin. The case argued that the state’s congressional maps are “anti-competitive” and favor a Republican majority. The court ultimately ruled for the district maps to retain the district lines that resulted in a congressional delegation of six Republicans and two Democrats.
Wisconsin is among 20 states that secured a federal court ruling against a Trump administration policy imposing a $100,000 fee on certain H-1B petitions.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice says the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the policy Monday, finding it unlawful. Wisconsin joined the multistate coalition challenging the policy late last year.
Attorney General Josh Kaul says, “This ruling stops an unlawful policy that shouldn’t have been adopted.” Kaul says the federal government should be addressing workforce shortages in health care and education, not worsening them.
As three alleged planners of Wisconsin’s fake elector scheme pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 11 forgery-related criminal charges in Dane County court, the criminal charges against them are moving forward in a national legal and political landscape that looks dramatically different from the one in which they were filed.
Wisconsin has one of the leading nuclear physics programs in the United States at UW-Madison’s College of Engineering. One of a handful of academic reactors in the United States sits on the UW-Madison campus and its graduates are largely coveted by companies hoping to build a talented workforce.
Democratic activists today approved a slate of resolutions that call for the abolishment of ICE, the support of gender-affirming care for young people, and an end to the state’s choice and voucher programs.
The resolutions were largely approved by voice vote without debate. But the party broke out two resolutions for discussion, including one that called for raising the minimum wage to a living wage of roughly $21 an hour.
Aid for childcare providers is expiring, the Universities of Wisconsin raises tuition, and the state reaches a $10 million PFAS settlement — Inside Wisconsin Politics reviews a busy start to summer.
The University of Wisconsin board has approved a tuition increase of 2% for the 2026-2027 academic year. That decision has some lawmakers in disagreement.
Here’s what guests on the May 29, 2026 episode said about broad voter support for a failed state surplus deal, prospects for job seekers, and a lawsuit over ICE holds by sheriffs.
Instead, the former judges, representatives of Law Forward, the Wisconsin Association for Justice and directors of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggest the Wisconsin Supreme Court should establish an advisory committee to study what process would work best in Wisconsin.
The Madison school district is seeking state approval to change how it ranks high school students nearing graduation, which could affect how many students qualify for automatic admission to state universities.
“Pets for Life” is a monthly wellness clinic hosted in Lac du Flambeau, in partnership with UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine, offering veterinary services that have been scarce in the community.
For the last year, staff from the university’s School of Veterinary Medicine have been making the trips, offering veterinary services that have been scarce in the community.
UW-Madison ranked third in the nation in the 2025 U.S. News and World Report’s Best Nuclear Engineering Programs. Four fusion companies spun out of the university — Xantho Technologies, SHINE Technologies, Type One Energy and Realta Fusion — and nearly 600 plasma physics PhD students have graduated from UW-Madison since its founding, interim chancellor Eric Wilcots said in opening remarks.
UW-Madison is closing a pair of libraries this summer as a result of campuswide budget cuts.
Friday was the last day students, faculty, staff and the public could visit the Geology and Geophysics Library. The Social Work Library shutters Aug. 14.
UW-Madison is taking another shot at building a new dorm to alleviate its campus housing crunch.
The Wisconsin Department of Administration, on behalf of the university, posted a request for proposals on Thursday, asking developers to submit plans for student housing with 1,500 to 2,000 beds and a 400-seat dining space.
Nearly 550 faculty members at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are set to receive pay raises this month as part of efforts to attract and retain faculty in high-demand fields of study.
State lawmakers provided $27 million annually and created an annual appropriation to the UW system in the current state budget for the compensation. Over 2,300 faculty members across the state’s 13 public universities are receiving raises through the funding, said Mark Pitsch, a UW system spokesperson.
The Universities of Wisconsin has launched a national search to identify UW-Madison’s next chancellor.
Acting UW system head Chris Patton and UW Board of Regents President Amy Bogost appointed a group of 23 faculty, staff, students and people from the Madison area to identify UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin’s successor.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison has named Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau founding dean of the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence as the university prepares to launch the new college July 1.
UW-Madison named Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau as founding dean of the College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence as the school prepares to launch the new college on July 1.
Approved in December by the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents, the college is the first academic division created at UW-Madison in more than 40 years.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison’s core mission has long held that the work of the university should benefit the entire state. A newly released study now quantifies that commitment, estimating that the university, its affiliated organizations and the startup companies it generates contribute $38.9 billion annually to Wisconsin’s economy.
You’re one of the smartest people in the country. You’ve had success throughout your career, academically and professionally. You serve on several boards of international businesses and joined public policy debates. You’ve answered questions on national issues posed by conservative and liberal talk show and podcast hosts.
But you might write the following note turning down a suggestion that you apply to be the next president of the Universities of Wisconsin.
UW-Madison political professor Howard Schweber joins For the Record to analyze voting patterns in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
Wisconsin has added a definition of antisemitism to state law, joining dozens of other states but drawing sharp criticism from opponents who say it will police free speech rights, specifically on college campuses.
Gov. Tony Evers on March 27 signed Assembly Bill 446, now 2025 Act 143, codifying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition and examples for antisemitism to help determine discriminatory intent.
Republican lawmakers are threatening to remove members of the UW Board of Regents after the Board asserted its own authority to fire the Universities of Wisconsin president.
The Regents unanimously voted without discussion Tuesday to fire President Jay Rothman, who has led the about 165,000-student and 13-university system since 2022.
Governor Tony Evers signed a bill Wednesday that gave the University of Wisconsin athletic department financial cushion in the form of tax dollars to service debt, and codified the university’s rules surrounding name, image, and likeness payments to athletes into law.
As Wisconsin farmers prepare for the 2026 growing season, the University of Wisconsin–Madison Division of Extension is launching another year of Badger Crop Connect webinars, a twice-monthly series providing timely, data-driven insights for the state’s corn, soybean, small grain, and forage farmers and industries.
