MADISON, Wisconsin — The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Assembly passed the state budget with only two votes to spare early Thursday morning, sending the $73 billion spending plan on to Gov. Scott Walker four days before he was to officially launch his presidential campaign.
The $70 billion, two-year spending plan is now Gov. Scott Walker’s to modify with his powerful veto authority, and ultimately sign. No word has been given on when that might occur, but the governor plans to formally announce his candidacy for president on Monday.
The University of Wisconsin is poised to see its state funding get cut yet again after Republicans made no major changes to the UW budget that passed the Senate Tuesday.
The University of Wisconsin-Parkside will take a smaller hit in state funding cuts than initially expected, but enough to cause the university to cut its operating budget by more than 2 percent.
Noted: Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald called the measure a “broader issue” and said “other governmental entities have issues” with law as it is currently written, including the UW System.
“It came from a number of different sources,” Fitzgerald said. “Some of them were related to certainly the lawsuit that Sen. Erpenbach was involved in. There was some suggestion from UW System on open records request related to some of their research and some issues related to the legislature and executive branch on dealing with open records requests.”
With just a few minutes to midnight, Senate Republicans passed the two-year $72.7 billion state budget Tuesday after voting to repeal salary minimums for workers on local government projects but abandon proposals that would have gutted the state’s open records law.
Associated Press summary. UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN— The university system’s budget would be cut by $250 million, it would be easier to fire tenured faculty, and faculty would have less of a role in making decisions under a weakening of the shared governance principle that national higher education experts say would make Wisconsin unique. In-state tuition would be frozen over the next two years.
Updates from the Associated Press on the Senate budget vote.
MADISON – The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Senate passed the $73 billion state budget just before midnight Tuesday, sending it to the Assembly after voting to repeal a prevailing wage law for local government projects, a move Democrats called an affront to the middle class.
The final budget numbers that University of Wisconsin campuses have been dreading for months were released late Monday, prompting a mad scramble on campuses to figure out the winners and losers.
Noted: The threats don’t just disrupt schools, though. University of Wisconsin-Madison police say they are still investigating a threat of a gun at a library Saturday night that forced the evacuation of the Memorial Union Terrace on the busy July 4 holiday.
The cut to the Madison campus was reduced slightly when lawmakers restored $50 million in state funding to the System as part of changes to Gov. Scott Walker’s executive budget. The budget now calls for cutting System funding by $250 million over two years. UW-Madison will receive $4 million of that restored funding in the 2015-16 fiscal year.
The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse is facing $5.5 million in state funding cuts this year and could see the least amount of relief from restored funding to the University of Wisconsin System.
From Charleston, to Ferguson, even to Madison, issues of diversity remain constant in many parts of the United States. Now, as Wisconsin finalizes its state budget, many UW-System schools worry, classes dealing with diversity and multicultural studies may disappear.
Noted: The proposed changes came as Walker is being sued for refusing to release such records related to his proposal to alter the University of Wisconsin System’s mission statement to eliminate the Wisconsin Idea.
A provision sneaked into the state budget bill by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee would deal a significant blow to open government in Wisconsin.
The provision, part of an omnibus motion of changes affecting the University of Wisconsin System, would exempt universities from the rule in place for all other state agencies regarding the naming of finalists for key positions. No longer would they need to identify the five most qualified applicants, or each applicant if there are fewer than five.
Noted: Two months ago, Walker declined to make public records related to his proposal to rewrite the University of Wisconsin System’s mission statement and release the Wisconsin Idea from state law. He argued he didn’t have to release those records to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and others because they were part of his office’s internal deliberations.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison lecturer says it’s time for state lawmakers to review Wisconsin’s college reciprocity agreements with Minnesota and other states.
UW-Madison academic units are preparing to absorb nearly $23 million in cuts under Gov. Scott Walker’s 2015-2017 budget, a campus spokesperson said this week. Administrative units will cut $9 million in expenses.
The deal meant to resolve a month-long impasse over the state budget that Republican legislative leaders unveiled on Wednesday morning was anything but simple, and far from final.
With more voices joining the highly charged debate over tenure protections in the University of Wisconsin System, it has become increasingly clear that at least in education circles, what’s happening here is perceived as a bellwether for public universities across the country.
Christian Schneider proposes that the changes to tenure will be like an Act 10 for universities (“A Brawl Over Tenure on Wisconsin Campuses,” Cross Country, June 20). Tell that to the employees of the University of Wisconsin system that already experienced an effective pay cut through Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10. (Subscription required.)
The online ad, from liberal advocacy groups One Wisconsin Now, Wisconsin Jobs Now and the Agenda Project Action Fund, depicts a person drowning in open water while “Pomp and Circumstance” plays, an image the groups say is meant to symbolize the plight of student loan borrowers. At the end of the ad, a mortarboard washes ashore.”Americans are drowning in student debt,” the ad says.
Two conservative UW professors say Scott Walker’s proposed changes to tenure could leave conservatives on campus vulnerable.
As someone who graduated with a degree in Computer Science from UW in 2011, I am deeply concerned by the proposed cuts and alterations to the legislative protections that have been granted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison in this year’s proposed budget. In particular, I am distressed at the potential alteration of tenure protections. While it is true that Wisconsin is unique in that the state actually places tenure protections into state law, I fear the language of the proposed change to tenure will actually put our state’s universities behind other institutions in terms of faculty retention, and will potentially damage the quality of our state’s world-class academic research, scientific or otherwise.
David Krakauer, the departing director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, offers a sweeping critique about what’s wrong with higher education.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank weighs in on the future of tenure at UW-Madison on WPR’s Central Time.
Long-time tenured right and libertarian-leaning UW-Madison professors Donald Downs and John Sharpless elaborate in Politico Magazine on their worry that Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed changes to tenure “will silence the very voices he claims to support.”
Noted: The only non-union state employees the plan wouldn’t impact are University of Wisconsin workers. The UW System is in the process of creating its own personnel system that will devise a separate compensation plan for its employees.
The issues in the debate over proposed changes to the University of Wisconsin System are fundamental and important. I do not to wish undercut this discussion but to expand it to include the ways that members of the UW System’s Board of Regents are selected. The current process is archaic and needs extensive reorganization.
As far as college campuses go, we’re a rare, endangered species: two long-tenured professors who lean right and libertarian. But we’re increasingly worried that in trying to take up another conservative crusade, our governor, Scott Walker, is going to silence the very voices he claims to support.
Noted: “The university doesn’t deserve this cut,” said Senator Luther Olsen, a Republican, as lawmakers voted last month to restore $50 million of the governor’s cuts. “We are fools if we go around bashing one of the best things in the state of Wisconsin.”
In the past few weeks, I’ve been in the midst of a debate over tenure for college professors in Wisconsin.
Noted: Since the initial discovery — by accident, during a field tour at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum — jumping worms have been positively identified in five Wisconsin counties, including multiple spots in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties, according to the DNR.
The great K-12, undergraduate and graduate education systems of Wisconsin have been built by the hard work and investment of generations. But to destroy them, the Legislature and Gov. Scott Walker need only to continue swinging the hammer of their destructive legislation.
One hundred years ago this month, the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin dedicated a bronze plaque commemorating a historic victory for academic freedom. When a distinguished faculty member, economist Richard T. Ely, had been accused of promoting socialism and fomenting disorder through his pro-labor speeches and writings, the regents had cleared him of wrongdoing, even though he had spoken out at a time of violent nationwide industrial conflict. In the words of the tablet:
First, Gov. Scott Walker defeated public-sector labor unions. Then, he declawed their private-sector counterparts. Now, just weeks before his expected entry into the presidential race, the Wisconsin Republican is staring down another conservative target: college professors.
Republican legislative leaders remain deadlocked — even sparring publicly last week — on key parts of Wisconsin’s next state budget with just over a week left until a deadline to have the two-year spending plan in place.
For the past seven summers, UW professor Kathy Cramer has visited rural gas stations, small cafes and bait shops on off-the-beaten-path county highways that snake their way around the state. In those places, she interviews the locals who gather on weekday mornings.
On a sunny, early summer day, Memorial Union Terrace on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is idyllic. The high, cloudless skies and cool blue water of Lake Mendota serve as a backdrop to coeds drinking beer, sunning themselves and studying for exams. (Subscription required.)
Sweeping changes to the UW System sought by Gov. Scott Walker and his allies are fueled by public misconceptions regarding faculty workload and the overall cost of the UW System.
– A group of University of Wisconsin-Madison professors is appealing to the UW Board of Regents to preserve tenure protections and standards of shared governance.
Noted: Political Science Prof. Ken Mayer comments.
Regent Farrow: “Madison has money. Madison is our flagship and should be well supported. I don’t argue with that at all. But they are also in a position to support things with their size and with their foundations and with their various other sources of money.” UW spokesman Lucas: “Our understanding is that no final decisions have yet been made on how the additional $50 million would be allocated across the System. Chancellor (Rebecca) Blank has been in communication with the leadership of System and the Board of Regents to stress the importance of adequate funding for UW-Madison to the extent possible amid the $250 million budget cut.”
The timing could not be worse for new state-by-state faculty tenure rates to be released by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Letter to the editor from Richard D. Legon, president of the Association of Governing Board and Universities, and Susan Whealler Johnston, executive vice president of the Association of Governing Boards.
Noted: When the Madison area — which benefits from the presence of the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as health-care software giant Epic Systems Inc. — is taken out of the equation, Wisconsin looks like a lagging state in technology entrepreneurship, said Meier, who has cofounded his own start-ups in the past.
As Republican Gov. Scott Walker prepares to campaign for president as the man who tamed Wisconsin’s unions, he’s taking on a new labor fight: weakening tenure protections for professors at public colleges and universities.
Wisconsin’s budget committee remains at a standstill and won’t meet on Wednesday, as previously suggested … Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said GOP leaders will “tentatively” resume their meetings again tomorrow to reach an agreement on the state’s transportation budget and a proposal to publicly finance a new Milwaukee Bucks arena.
We are currently earning our doctorates in economics at universities in California and Massachusetts, but we left our hearts in Wisconsin.
The battle over Wisconsin’s tenure law will soon be waged in the state Assembly and Senate. Gov. Walker proposed eliminating the law in the budget he handed legislators.
Playing host to so many political protests in recent years, the Capitol rotunda saw another June 11, as a coalition of activist groups known as Another Budget is Possible rallied against Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed biennial budget. More than 10 speakers challenged the budget cuts, including Sergio González, a doctoral candidate in the UW-Madison history department and a member of the Teachers Assistant Association.
University of Wisconsin faculty continued to speak out against potential tenure changes in the state budget and Chancellor Rebecca Blank spoke on her plan to retain tenure protections at a listening session in Union South Monday.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank says she’s heard from many graduates of UW-Madison that they want to help the school.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank says faculty are unhappy with proposed changes to their job protections, and she is worried she’ll lose top people as a result.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been making national headlines for years taking on public and private sector unions. Now, the possible GOP presidential candidate is going after another group — nearly 5,000 tenured faculty in the 26-campus University of Wisconsin system.
WASHINGTON — The American Association of University Professors voted Saturday to censure the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and three other institutions, while protesting planned changes — pushed by Republican lawmakers — to tenure and shared governance within the University of Wisconsin System. Members also discussed at their annual meeting here how the association might better respond to administrative moves to close troubled colleges in light of the shocking Sweet Briar College announcement earlier this year. They called that decision the first of many coming threats to similar institutions in financially and politically turbulent times.
The American Association of University Professors voted overwhelmingly at its annual conference here on Saturday to censure the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for withdrawing a tenured-faculty appointment from Steven G. Salaita over his Twitter posts harshly criticizing Israel.
Editorial condemning the legislative Joint Finance Committee’s amendment to the state budget bill exempting the UW System from the requirement that names of five finalists for key jobs be made public.
Recap of Chancellor Blank’s appearance on the Sunday program “UpFront with Mike Gousha.”
