The number of Wisconsin high school graduates next school year is projected to reach its lowest level since 2000, sparking urgency and creativity in admissions offices across the state, all of whom will be competing to enroll the smallest pool of in-state students seen in years.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank says she is “really, deeply worried” about funding for the university’s building projects.
UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine and its adjoining hospital is poised to expand the amount of working space for students and staff by about 50 percent as part of a $128.1 million project.
Wisconsin’s flagship university remains one of the top public higher education institutions in the United States despite a slight drop compared to last year, according to a report released Monday.
MADISON — For those keeping score, the only votes Thursday against budget requests the University of Wisconsin System will send to the state came from a Democrat and a Republican member of the Board of Regents running for high-profile political offices.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents approved a pair of budget requests to state lawmakers, including a $1.9 billion capital budget request for building and renovation projects around the state.
The regents approved the request 16-1 on Thursday. The request seeks an additional $82.5 million in tax dollars to meet performance-based goals Republican legislators have imposed on the system.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents has approved a $1.96 billion construction and maintenance budget request.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents approved the System’s 2019-21 proposed operating and capital budgets on Thursday, with the only two dissenting votes coming from the two Regents running for political office.
Four projects would be funded by increases in student fees, including a new field house and soccer facility at UW-La Crosse; a new UW-Madison natatorium and recreational center; and a new UW-Stevens Point student health center.
State lawmakers are clashing in the wake of the new University of Wisconsin System budget proposal, disagreeing over the fundamental role of the university system.
The request the UW System will put forward for $107.5 million in new state funding over the next two years — $82.5 million in “outcomes-based” funding and $25 million to expand programs mostly in STEM and high-demand fields — is framed around “university and statutorily required goals.”
System leaders released their 2019-2021 budget request Monday. The Board of Regents is scheduled to vote on the request Thursday during a meeting at UW-Madison. Approval would send the request on to Gov. Scott Walker’s office for consideration as he begins work on his executive budget.
The University of Wisconsin System is asking for $107 million more in state money, three-quarters of which would be outcome-based, rewarding or punishing campuses based on how well they meet performance metrics such as student access, progress toward degree completion, “workforce contributions” and operating efficiencies.
Quoted: “For us, that does create some challenges as far as how we pay for what we do,” Gow said. “We do have inflationary cost increases. I don’t know how realistic it is to continue that forever.”
UW System leaders won’t seek any tuition or student fee increases in the next state budget but will consider asking Gov. Scott Walker for an additional $107 million in state aid to help meet Republican-imposed performance goals and increase access to high-demand programs.
Freezing tuition for in-state students at public colleges and universities is welcome help for Wisconsin families. But state leaders need to be realistic. Unless the state can provide better funding, too, the freeze will continue to harm schools.
Gov. Scott Walker says if re-elected to a third term, he’ll seek to extend the existing University of Wisconsin System tuition freeze for in-state undergraduate students for another four years.
Reisem is one of more than 500 cancer patients from Wisconsin who have had newly available genetic testing done on their tumors, which can lead doctors to use therapies that target specific mutations instead of standard chemotherapy. The initiative, started at the UW Carbone Cancer Center in 2015, is supported by $1 million in the current state budget.
The regents are scheduled to approve the 2018-19 budget Friday at UW-Milwaukee. The spending plan calls for raising student fees at four-year schools an average of $33 per student. Room and board would increase an average of $118.
Gov. Scott Walker has instructed state agencies to assume their next budgets will have no increases in state funding, with exceptions for some of the budget’s priciest areas such as schools, prisons and Medicaid.
Walker said Republican initiatives that would be undone with Democratic wins include the Foxconn display-screen manufacturing project that could bring 13,000 jobs to the state in exchange for $4.5 billion in taxpayer incentives; a University of Wisconsin tuition freeze; photo identification requirements for voting; abortion limitations; and collective bargaining restrictions enacted through the Act 10 law.
A state legislative panel has approved a plan to divvy up about $26 million to University of Wisconsin System campuses based on metrics for student access, progress toward completion, “workforce contributions” and operating efficiencies.
The state Senate has voted to give state workers, including University of Wisconsin System workers, across-the-board 2-percent pay increases in each of the next two years.
College tuition could become free for foster children throughout the state under a new bill, as legislators argue that those who age out of the system receive far too little social support.
Walker also announced creation of a $200,000 scholarship fund to encourage students to take agriculture courses at a state technical college or the University of Wisconsin College of Agriculture.
A new bill could revitalize a dormant program from last century to create environmental conservation jobs for some of the nearly 70 percent of young people struggling with higher education costs and student debt in the state.
The bills would create grants to provide incentives for serving as foster parents and give foster children free tuition within the University of Wisconsin System and the Wisconsin Technical College System.
Public universities in the Midwest have conducted some of the country’s most important research, leading to scientific and technological breakthroughs. And funding cuts to these universities can carry major economic impacts.
The main barrier to taking more is a lack of faculty to educate more students without diminishing the quality of the experience for all. Private gifts help, but the core funding for faculty hires comes from state government support and student tuition. Neither source has grown much for years.
Although Gov. Walker signed the two-year state budget into law over a week ago, the UW System is still figuring out how the budget affects one of its programs targeted at non-traditional students.
The measures also will impact the University of Wisconsin, which, after years of Republican budget cuts and policies that some claim are anti-academic, is already having problems recruiting and retaining talented faculty.
Sigurd Olson – loyal guardian of northern lakes and waterways – has been selected to represent Ashland and Bayfield counties as part of an ad campaign launched by UW-Madison known as Project 72 with the new slogan, “Thank You!”
Blank appeared on a recent segment of Sunday political talk show “UpFront with Mike Gousha” with UW Colleges and UW Extension Chancellor Cathy Sandeen. The pair weighed in on the budget, a new one-year free tuition program for first generation students and the proposed Foxconn plant, expressing optimism about all three.
Gov. Scott Walker signed the state budget on Thursday last week, securing an extra $100 million in funding for the University of Wisconsin System.
Gov. Scott Walker on Thursday signed the two-year, $76 billion budget, providing $600 million more for K-12 schools, cutting property taxes, keeping a freeze on instate University of Wisconsin System tuition and doubling fees on hybrid drivers.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is signing the nearly three-month late state budget into law, a move that will allow him to transition into re-election mode.
Gov. Scott Walker issued 99 partial vetoes of the state’s two-year budget on Wednesday, rejecting several highly-anticipated additions to the bill, which was written by the Republican-held Wisconsin Legislature.
In their latest attack on the eggheads, Wisconsin Republicans have revived Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to force the University of Wisconsin System to keep track of the time professors spend teaching and to reward those “who teach more than a standard academic load.”
Among the non-fiscal items the finance committee added to the budget are: Looser qualifications for UW System leaders; A mandate for UW to report and reward the time professors spend teaching.
The state budget is now back in the hands of Gov. Scott Walker. The state Senate passed the $76 billion spending plan on a vote of 19-14 on Friday night.
Nass, Stroebel and Kapenga have given Fitzgerald a list of amendments they want, including expanding the state’s voucher school program, blocking the University of Wisconsin System from spending $4 million on diversity training and moving up repeal of prevailing wage laws from September 2018 to January.
Noted: Kapenga, Nass and Stroebel’s hoped-for changes include requiring a referendum before local governments can impose wheel taxes; allowing local governments to continue to regulate quarries; prohibiting diversity training for University of Wisconsin System students, and speeding up the repeal of the state’s prevailing wage law that determines the minimum pay for those working on publicly funded infrastructure projects.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is accusing some Senate Republicans of holding the state hostage with their opposition to the state budget.
Four Republican senators are holding up final approval of Wisconsin’s delayed state budget.
Noted: HIGHER EDUCATION: Tuition across the University of Wisconsin system would be frozen this year and next while increasing funding by $36 million, two years after their budget was cut by $250 million. UW would have to monitor teaching workloads and develop policies rewarding those who teach more than average. All UW campuses would be barred from requiring that only faculty members or those granted tenure be considered when hiring chancellors or president of the system.
Noted: Tuition at University of Wisconsin System schools will be frozen for another two years, but the budget will not include Walker’s proposal to cut tuition.
The UW budget also includes $26.3 million in performance-based funding to be tied to four goals for the UW System: student access, student progress and completion, contributions to the workforce and operational efficiency and effectiveness. The Board of Regents will be required to set metrics to measure schools’ progress toward those goals if they stay in the budget once it is formally adopted
Noted: In addition to setting spending levels, the budget includes a few key policy measures. It scraps the state’s prevailing wage requirement for workers on public construction projects and imposes a new, controversial requirement to track how much time professors in the University of Wisconsin System spend teaching.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Assembly Republicans passed the state budget after a 10-week delay Wednesday, sending the $76 billion spending plan to a Senate chamber paralyzed by GOP infighting.
University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty members are pushing back against Republican lawmakers’ decision to re-insert language in the state budget calling for tracking professors’ teaching loads.
Lawmakers on the state’s budget-writing committee have revived a controversial plan to track how much time professors in the University of Wisconsin System spend teaching — five months after they initially rejected the proposal.
Wisconsin’s $76 billion state budget, which sends more money to K-12 schools but does not come up with a long-term funding solution for dilapidated roads, cleared a legislative committee more than two months late Wednesday night, setting the stage for swift passage in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
In this year’s omnibus motion, lawmakers adopted a Walker proposal to require the UW System to monitor teaching workloads and report that data to the governor and the Legislature; and to move up by a few months 2 percent raises for state employees.
University of Wisconsin schools would be required to monitor teaching workloads for faculty and other instructors under a budget provision passed Wednesday evening by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee.
More than two months after it was supposed to have been signed by the governor, Wisconsin’s proposed biennial state budget passed a crucial hurdle Wednesday night as the Joint Finance Committee completed its work on the plan.
The University of Wisconsin System got more than half the bonding authority it wanted for capital projects by the time the Legislature’s budget-writing committee finished its work Monday, and it also got money for major maintenance, repairs and renovations to aging buildings that had been cut from the state’s last biennial budget.
Noted: All technical college boards and UW chancellors could authorize a charter school under the proposal. Now, only the chancellors of UW-Milwaukee and UW-Parkside and the boards of Milwaukee Area Technical College and Gateway Technical College in Kenosha can do so.
The state’s budget-writing committee unanimously voted Monday to approve a proposal that would give UW-Madison $60 million to repair and maintain buildings on campus.
The Legislature’s budget-writing committee has unanimously endorsed a $1 billion plan to build and maintain state facilities, including more than $60 million for the UW-Madison campus.
Gov. Scott Walker said Tuesday state lawmakers are nearing agreement on the delayed 2017-2019 state budget.
