The University of Wisconsin System will still launch its Wisconsin Tuition Promise this fall, using $13.8 million it has on hand to fund the program for low-income students.
Unfortunately, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, decided last week to declare war on these programs. Vos’s timing could not have been worse, and his thinking could not have been more wrongheaded.
Noted: Political organizers in Wisconsin say the numbers indicate that young people will participate if given the tools and information to do so. In a state where many races are decided by razor-thin margins, this population sees its voice as able to make a difference, said Ali Beneker, 19, who chairs the University of Wisconsin-Madison chapter of College Republicans.
“When we have 10 statewide elections in the last 22 years that were decided by less than 30,000 votes, and then you look at the UW-Madison campus, and we have around 50,000 people, that’s a huge impact that college students can have on Wisconsin elections,” she said. “I think that students are starting to realize the power we have.”
University of Wisconsin Law School Professor Miriam Seifter explains legal arguments over the state’s 1849 law and later statutes related to abortion as hearings begin in a high-profile court case.
Ashley Swanson, associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said hospital mergers — on average — increase prices, while having a negligible effect on patient care.
“It seems like they primarily increase prices when the merging hospitals are located close to one another,” she said. “But there is some relatively new evidence suggesting that cross-market mergers can sometimes increase prices as well.”
Noted: Additionally, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found, menstrual cycles are highly-variable on an individual level, with 1 in 5 women having an “irregular” cycle. For some, that activity can be detected 35 to 37 days after the beginning of their last period.
Noted: Pocan’s $24 million also covered 15 projects, including $3 million for a Dane County water filtration upgrade, $2 million to expand a Green County YMCA, and $3 million to build a new food pantry in Madison. It also includes a $2 million request for the University of Wisconsin-Madison to aid in PFAS contamination research.
Vos, R-Rochester, told conservative WISN-AM radio host Jay Weber that he’s open to cutting more funding, saying the nearly $14 million only reflected positions explicitly mentioning diversity, equity and inclusion, “not the funding that actually implements much of their left-wing agenda.”
The rate at which Wisconsin’s “prime working age” adults are either working or looking for work is among the best in the country, according to a recent report from the University of Wisconsin-Extension.
“It speaks a lot to our work ethic,” said Matt Kures, the report’s author and a community economic development specialist for UW-Extension. “Traditionally, we have had high participation rates and I think that’s just kind of ingrained in us.”
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average cost of infant care in Wisconsin is $12,567 annually, or $1,047 per month. Laura Dresser, associate director of the COWS economic think tank at UW-Madison, said women in the workforce feel the effects of that most.
“Moms tend to carry the burden of care disproportionately in families,” she said. “The years before the kid goes to school … are really expensive years to work.“
The University of Wisconsin-Madison campus erupted in protests this week over a student’s racist video. Meanwhile, the UW System is getting even more serious pressure from the state Legislature for perceived liberal bias.
High-earning, young adults increased alcohol use the most during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a UW-Madison survey of Wisconsin residents.
The panel, organized by two University of Wisconsin-Madison staff and faculty lobbying organizations, took place just hours after committee Republicans voted Tuesday in one sweeping motion to strip more than 500 items from Evers’ budget. Among those provisions were 14 UW System initiatives, including funding for programs that would make college more affordable for students.
As Wisconsin lawmakers weigh their funding goals for higher education, two campuses are winding down due to declining enrollment and financial woes. We hear from Washington County officials aiming to save a struggling two-year college. Then, an education reporter brings us the latest news in Wisconsin higher education.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos encouraged the UW System to remove campus diversity offices days after a video of a UW-Madison student expressing harmful rhetoric against the Black community circulated on social media.
Gov. Tony Evers on Tuesday tapped two new members to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents — a former Kenosha County executive and a UW-Green Bay student.
Written by Allie Boldt, Legal Research Director for the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The state’s top Republican wants to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion offices at public universities and hinted at potential budget cuts if the University of Wisconsin System fails to make a good-faith effort on his request.
Back in 2015, Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Scott Walker thought to burnish his culture warrior cred in advance of a bid for the presidency by taking arms against the University of Wisconsin. Walker cut the state university’s budget. His hand-picked board of regents gutted tenure protections for its faculty.
University of Wisconsin System President Jay Rothman said Monday the perceived liberal bias on college campuses won’t be solved by asking professors their political affiliation. Instead, he wants to focus future hiring on a more diverse applicant pool.
As a clinical professor at the UW-Madison School of Nursing, (Gina) Bryan said she also sees many parts of the state struggle to attract psychiatric advanced practice nurse graduates, who go instead to Minnesota or Iowa where they can work independently. “Why would our students stay here and practice?” she said.
Bunmi Kumapayi, a UW Health nurse practitioner who has treated urologic conditions for more than 20 years, said the doctor she collaborates with allows her to work very independently. But for many newer advanced practice nurses around the state, that is not the case, she said.
The number of Wisconsinites who have left college without finishing their degree or certificate programs has grown to more than 746,000, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science and law professor Howard Schweber said if Kaul’s lawsuit is successful, the 20-week abortion law would go back into effect along with the waiting periods and mandatory ultrasound requirements.
Vice Chancellor for University Relations Charles Hoslet said that the university has positively impacted every part of the state since it was founded in 1848. “From the beginning, UW–Madison has been a vital contributor to the state’s industry and economy, and has helped raise people’s standard of living,” Hoslet said.
A “ground blessing ceremony” — which couldn’t accurately be called a groundbreaking ceremony, as a pit already exists where two former maintenance buildings stood — was held Tuesday, with university officials celebrating the growth of the school and emphasizing the importance of data analytics to UW-Madison and society going forward.
“That is what I’m most excited about this building and what we’re doing here,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said Tuesday. “To solve real, important problems in the world, so often we must engage across. We can’t do that if we’re siloed. We can’t do that if we’re wearing blinders.”
Public and private universities in Wisconsin and beyond are vying to recruit students impacted by the upcoming closure of Milwaukee’s Cardinal Stritch University.
It’s been just more than two weeks since Cardinal Stritch President Dan Scholz announced the university will permanently close its doors next month. The university, which enrolled 1,365 students in the fall of 2021 according to federal data, said it was pursuing agreements with area universities to help students with unfinished degrees transfer to other schools.
Tom Yuill, a University of Wisconsin professor and wildlife disease expert, provided health testing of the birds.
A job working at Madison-based UW Health while attending nursing school at Madison College. Full-time benefits and salaries. Paid time-off to attend classes. Free college tuition, books and supplies.
That’s the offer on the table for those aspiring to earn a nursing degree through a recently announced, first-of-its-kind apprenticeship program in Wisconsin launching this fall. The program is designed specifically to address staffing shortages in Wisconsin that Rudy Jackson, UW Health’s chief nurse executive, said have reached “crisis levels.”
If state lawmakers want to survey University of Wisconsin System faculty and administrators on free speech, they need to do something they didn’t do for a similar survey of students last fall, the student survey’s producer said Thursday.
It’s also not clear that social media use contributes to young people’s emotional struggles, said Heather Kerkorian, who researches the effects of media on children’s development and family interactions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“If we look at individual kids, some kids might benefit a lot from social media, some might be harmed by social media and most of them are not affected much,” Kerkorian said.
While public funding for the state’s technical colleges is one of the highest in the nation, the University of Wisconsin System is among the lowest funded, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum.
The report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum showed Wisconsin lagged behind the national average, and well behind its Midwest neighbors in tax funding and net tuition revenue per full-time equivalent student in 2021.
Funding for Wisconsin’s public higher education systems is a tale of two stories, one that is funded eighth worst in the country and another that is fifth best, according to a new report.
The report found that the University of Wisconsin System ranked 43rd nationally for per-pupil funding in 2021. Conversely, only four other states funded their two-year community or technical colleges better than Wisconsin.
Public funding for the University of Wisconsin System ranks as one of the lowest in the nation, according to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum.
A new project will see a network of more than 90 weather stations built to better monitor local soil and weather conditions across the state. We speak with the head of the project to learn how researchers and farmers may benefit from more data.
A survey of Wisconsin citizens shows the state’s political divides are disrupting social relationships and personal bonds. Michael Wagner, a UW-Madison journalism professor, said the center embarked on this research to understand problems of a divided state to help articulate a solution. Its report shows results of what are described as “civic fractures.”
UW-Madison tribal relations director Carla Vigue’s two sons will grow up differently than she did.
Vigue was raised on the Oneida reservation west of Green Bay, but her sons will be urban Indians, defined as a population of people who have ancestral ties to First Nations but who don’t live on a reservation. Vigue’s role as the university’s tribal relations director, which she started in January, will be one way to not only strengthen her sons’ ties to their culture, but introduce them to other Indigenous cultures.
Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development announced the University of Wisconsin System was awarded $1.1 million through the Wisconsin Fast Forward Program.
The line to vote last Tuesday at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire stretched on and on … and on some more.
The corner of a lunch room designated as the campus polling place for sleepy spring elections simply wasn’t enough in this year’s state Supreme Court race. UW-Eau Claire students cast ballots at a level close to last November and even higher than in the 2020 election, big races where the city clerk’s office relies on a university ballroom to meet voter demand.
Quoted: “The question that economists are debating right now is the degree of the downturn and when will it hit,” said Steven Deller, a professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Universities across the state are beginning the process of embedding their school psychology graduate students into local public schools. That’s the case for UW-Madison, which is using a new $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to recruit and train 24 new school psychology graduate students, with an emphasis on students of color, into Madison’s public schools over the course of five years.
The forms are meant to stay in the provider’s office, as with other medical evaluation forms a patient might fill out during an exam, said David Bernhardt, a UW Health Kids general pediatrician, sports medicine physician at UW Health and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
“The form is not designed to go back to the school, so the history and the physical exam form are meant as a framework to guide the provider in getting information in an efficient way,” he said.
Tuition at former University of Wisconsin System colleges in Marinette, Manitowoc and Sheboygan will increase by around $1,300 over four years as part of UW-Green Bay’s “One University, Four Locations” strategy.
The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute has released its new county health rankings. We speak with Sheri Johnson, the institute’s director about the variables that produce the healthiest communities.
If Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann had his way, his county would have one college campus.
Students currently have two local options: the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Washington County or the West Bend campus of Moraine Park Technical College.
The Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities held a more than four hour meeting on Thursday in an attempt to find ways the Legislature can facilitate free expression on the state’s public university campuses.
Republican state lawmakers questioning whether a lack of political diversity on college campuses is hurting education discussed possible fixes — like considering political affiliation when hiring professors — during a legislative hearing Thursday. The meeting follows a University of Wisconsin System student free speech survey that found a majority of conservative respondents reported self-censoring views in class.
An hour before the polls closed on Tuesday, Teddy Landis was standing outside a freshman dining hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, trying to encourage students who hadn’t voted yet to cast their ballots.
Thursday’s hearing was the first formal legislative discussion since the results of the UW System’s controversial free speech survey were released earlier this year. The survey focused on how much students self-censor or decline to share opinions in class. Republicans often accuse colleges of suppressing conservative views in classrooms and in who is invited to speak on campus.
Noted: Considered by many to be the father of wildlife ecology and the United States’ wilderness system, the Iowa-born Aldo Leopold was a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose non-fiction book, A Sand County Almanac (1949), helped inspire and inform the environmental movement.
Quoted: Both referendums to change the state’s bail policies passed with nearly 70% in favor. Howard Schweber, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the changes take effect right away.
“There will need to be a drafting of a formal version of the rules we put in the legislative record, but there’s no reason not to take much time at all,” Schweber said.
Quoted: What if there were a dispute over the Legislature’s handling of an impeachment? Then the Wisconsin Supreme Court would decide, as it has in other states, said Miriam Seifter, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School professor.
“An impeachment that immediately follows a free and fair election is not a sign of a healthy democracy,” Seifter said. “Absent allegations of corruption or crime, impeaching a judge who just won a resounding electoral victory would show a troubling disregard for the will of the voters.”
Quoted: While nearly unheard of, Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the old norms of how Wisconsin government operates have fallen away since former Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 legislation, followed by the recall election in 2011.
“The series of steps both parties — but especially Republicans — have taken shows the Legislature plays hardball,” Burden said. “Republicans, in their majority for the last 12 years, have not been shy about exploring what tools are available to them and trying to push them as far as possible.”
Quoted: “Housing right now is unlike 2008, when we overstimulated housing demand, and that drove up housing prices. Now, housing is expensive because there’s an inadequate supply,” said Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “There are two parts to the discussion about bail in Wisconsin,” University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor Adam Stevenson said. “One is what, if any, cash is required for release and the other is what conditions or rules do folks have to follow when they are out in the community on bail.”
Quoted: Lawmakers can use the results to gauge public opinion on an issue and inform policy decisions, according to state documents. However, referendums have been increasingly used by both political parties, particularly with non-partisan spring elections, which don’t usually generate great voter turnout, said Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“These elections just don’t generate the same level of media coverage or public discussion so these gimmicks are one way to get the attention of the voter,” Burden said. “The effect on overall turnout probably won’t be great, but in Wisconsin, most people assume elections are going to be close, so even a change in the balance of things by a percentage point or two could tip the race and tip the balance of the Supreme Court itself.”
Quoted: While nearly unheard of, Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said the old norms of how Wisconsin government operates have fallen away since Former Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 legislation followed by the recall election in 2011.
“The series of steps both parties — but especially Republicans have taken — shows the Legislature plays hardball,” Burden said. “Republicans, in their majority for the last 12 years, have not been shy about exploring what tools are available to them and trying to push them as far as possible.”
The UW-Madison Center for Communication and Civic Renewal released a new survey measuring political divides and common ground in Wisconsin. We talk to the Mike Wagner, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the group’s faculty director, about the results and the path forward.
Madison’s political landscape is shifting and its common council is looking much younger.
More and more young Wisconsinites find themselves not only running for, but sitting in Madison Common Council seats. Some said their interests piqued while enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Under the law, you’re not supposed to use cash to keep people detained. Cash bond is always supposed to be just a way of making sure people are complying with the rules to decide if they actually are guilty or not,” said Cecelia Klingele, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “The idea is if you have money, you get to be out pending release, and if you don’t have money, you’re stuck, and so we should set high bonds that people can’t meet. In fact, under existing law — U.S. and state law — you have to set reasonable bonds in amounts that people are expected to be able to pay. People are supposed to be out pending release. And we use conditions to keep everyone safe, not money, which has disparate effects on different people.”
The growing research into PFAs contamination finds sources in everyday consumer goods like toilet paper and traces PFAs into Green Bay and the Great Lakes. We talk to Christy Remucal, is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and the director of the Water Science and Engineering Laboratory at UW-Madison, about where we’re finding PFAs in Wisconsin’s waters.
