The 2015-’16 academic year ended with pomp, circumstance — and skirmishes between Gov. Scott Walker and professors in the University of Wisconsin System.
Political storm clouds are forming over how much state aid the UW System will get in the next two-year budget. And, if Republicans keep control of the Legislature in November elections, those clouds could easily turn into a red-flag storm warning.
Reductions in public funding for higher education will negatively impact Wisconsin’s economy, according to a report released today by the Wisconsin Technology Council.
A new Wisconsin Technology Council report warns further state budget cuts to higher education “will prove costly over time.”
Continuing to cut higher education funding will hurt Wisconsin’s economy by reducing research and innovation on college campuses, according to a new report from the state organization that advises lawmakers on science and technology.
Noted: Gov. Scott Walker is taking swipes at University of Wisconsin faculty who have recently been passing no-confidence resolutions targeting the Board of Regents and system president Ray Cross.
Walker said Saturday at the state party convention that faculty are upset because changes to the law affecting tenure took away what he calls “job for life” protections. The faculty argue that’s a mischaracterization of tenure and that the law changes make it too easy to fire someone without justification.
Walker is also saying he “gets a kick” out of Democrats who talk about student loan debt. Walker asks why they didn’t support his tuition freeze at UW which has been in place for four years.
It’s not only this weekend’s graduates who are saying goodbye to UW-Madison. Budget cuts and politics have combined to convince faculty — some who thought they would retire at the campus — to accept offers of the kind they’ve declined in the past and take their expertise and grant funding elsewhere.
GREEN BAY, Wis — – Faculty across the UW System have taken a stand against the actions of system leaders with a symbolic no confidence vote.
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Faculty Senate on Wednesday approved a resolution expressing no confidence in UW System President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents.
The University Senate at UW-Eau Claire has tabled the discussion on whether it should make a vote of no confidence against UW System leaders.
UW-Green Bay faculty plan to take a “no-confidence” vote Wednesday afternoon in UW System President Ray Cross and the UW Board of Regents, while Gov. Scott Walker says university faculty “fail to grasp reality.”
t’s not often that a college student publicly accuses professors of immaturity and poor judgment. Yet Jacob W. Wrasse, a senior who this week finished his term as president of the student body at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire, has done just that as his campus’s University Senate considers whether to rebuke top university-system officials for failing to better shield professors’ tenure protections from a legislative assault.
Ray Cross, president of the University of Wisconsin System, wrote in a March email to the vice president of the system’s Board of Regents, who was chairing a task force on controversial changes to layoff policies concerning tenured faculty members, that tenure should not mean “a job for life,” according to public records first obtained by the The Cap Times. “That is a ‘union’ argument,” Cross wrote to Regent John Behling, comparing faculty members to railroad brakemen whom he said were kept on the job for years after they were no longer needed.
Next week, the University of Wisconsin-Extension will start planning to absorb $3.6 million in budget cuts to the agency’s county and university educational services.
Noted: Gousha also asked Vos about the impact of “no confidence” votes faculty members at UW-Madison and other UW campuses have taken in recent days. Vos said he thought the impact would be “minimal.”Some UW faculty opposed to budget cuts and changes to tenure have taken votes of “no confidence” in UW System President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents.”It’s not about the faculty,” Vos said. “When I look at the UW System, I look at the students who are there, the economic engine that happens across the state, quite frankly, and every campus.”
Last year, $250 million dollars in state funding were cut from the UW system, which also meant a loss of $3.6 million dollars in funding for the UW-Extension, which is charged with broadcast operations like WPR, providing online degrees, and working with all of Wisconsin’s counties on agricultural and economic development issues. We talk to a political writer who says that cutting funding to the extension service is contrary to the Wisconsin Idea and what it means to be a Wisconsinite.
While state budget cuts may make it more difficult for some students in the University of Wisconsin System to get the help they need to choose the right classes and stay on track for graduation, administrators say they are trying to protect advising and even expand it.
MENOMONIE — About $35 million may be available for UW System faculty and staff compensation thanks to lower fringe benefit costs from 1,400 workers leaving the university system, UW System President Ray Cross says.
The big budget cuts and tenure changes at the University of Wisconsin have caused some faculty and staff to call for changes.
But Tuesday, governor Scott Walker defended the changes that were put in place by him and GOP lawmakers.
Spokesman Alex Hummel said he never saved the video of chancellors rehearsing their presentations because the talks were canceled, and later deleted the files to clear space on a camera so he could record the Board of Regents meeting where the chancellors planned to speak.
Reductions to student advising, some academic programs, and the loss of teachers and a security officer were among the changes the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay made to accommodate state cuts to higher education, according to a new report.
What is this, the academic version of “The Gong Show”? What’s next? Will UW System President Ray Cross tell Becky Blank and other chancellors to sit in a corner and count to 10 because they’re being “whiny”?
The $250 million budget cuts that started in 2015 at the UW system schools are impacting students and faculty.
Mark us as seriously concerned about the impact of reductions in the levels of state funding for the University of Wisconsin System.
University of Wisconsin – Madison officials say budgets cuts brought upon by the $250-million deficit facing the entire UW System will lead to cuts in the number of work hours for student employees. The students use the income from these jobs to pay for tuition, room and board.
The University of Wisconsin released new information Tuesday about how the loss of $250 million in state funding will affect each college campus.
The University of Wisconsin System has released details of how all of the state’s campuses are managing the $250 million reduction to their state funding in the current budget. The documents were first published by the Wisconsin State Journal.
Summaries outlining the impact of state funding cuts to higher education say University of Wisconsin System campuses have laid off employees, consolidated administration, reduced advising services and cut course offerings over the past year.
Student employment hours have been drastically cut back because of state funding cuts, University of Wisconsin-Madison officials reported last week to UW System administrators. Those cuts came in addition to paring of undergraduate advising services and reductions in information technology services to students, according to a campus budget impact statement that was to have been presented to the Board of Regents when it met last week in Green Bay.
Larger class sizes, fewer course offerings, cuts to academic advising, potentially increasing how long it takes to finish a degree, loss of student jobs on campus, inability to grow high-demand programs, and outdated academic facilities that aren’t being maintained.
The chairman of the Assembly’s higher education committee says he won’t hold a hearing sought by Democrats on the impact of cuts to the University of Wisconsin System’s state funding.
Institutions across the University of Wisconsin System have laid off employees, consolidated administration, reduced advising services and cut course offerings over the past year, according to documents released Monday summarizing the impact of state cuts to higher education funding.
Campuses across the UW System are cutting dozens of positions and resorting to larger class sizes to deal with state budget cuts, according to a new UW System report.
Last spring, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Chancellor Jim Schmidt got word that, as part of $250 million in GOP-backed cuts to the UW System, his campus would be hit by a 16 percent reduction in state aid. It was the third-largest cut of all UW schools.
A group of Democratic state lawmakers are slamming a decision to scrap a presentation on how budget cut are affecting University of Wisconsin System campuses.
Chancellors at UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stout in Menomonie made their cases to the UW System Board of Regents on Thursday, explaining how budget cuts have hurt their campuses this year and how they could have long-lasting impacts.
UW–Madison spent $9 million to keep top faculty from being poached, but the damage has been done.
The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse could be cutting up to 10 teaching positions before the fall. University officials will decide which positions to eliminate in the next month. UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow said this is the first time the university will be eliminating teaching positions since last summer’s state budget cuts.
Noted: The bills would lay out $50,000 in additional funding annually for Alzheimer’s research at UW-Madison. The committee adopted all the bills Thursday. The only legislator to cast a “no” vote on any of them was Sen. Leah Vukmir. She voted against the UW-Madison bill.
The Republican leader of the state Senate says he expects the next state budget will be as difficult as the last one.
Gov. Scott Walker says he thinks the state Legislature can afford to give the go-ahead to a few new programs during the spring legislative session, including elements of his college affordability plan.
County officials voiced concerns Tuesday about the impact of a $3.6 million cut in funding for county programs provided by the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension.
While budget cuts are occurring on campuses across the University of Wisconsin System this year, the system’s own annual report released Monday said its financial standing “remained relatively strong” as of June 30, the end of the last fiscal year. That’s just a snapshot in time, UW System officials said, and it does not account for $250 million in state budget cuts that will come into play between this fiscal year and next.
MADISON — The University of Wisconsin System’s net worth has increased.
University of Wisconsin-Extension officials are mulling consolidating services across counties to absorb a budget hit.
University of Wisconsin-Extension officials are mulling consolidating services across counties to absorb a budget hit.
The two-year state budget Gov. Scott Walker signed in July cut $250 million from the UW System. Extension’s share of that cut is $7 million over the biennium.
Republican legislators want to pass the six bills that make up Governor Walker’s college affordability package, but new budget projections could put it in jeopardy.
The average student loan borrower in Wisconsin pays off about $3,300 dollars in debt each year, but can only deduct up to $2,500 of the interest on those loans from their state income taxes.
The state treasury will be $94.3 million lighter by the end of the 2015-17 budget cycle because of lower tax revenues, according to an updated snapshot of state finances from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
State revenue projections may be much lower than originally anticipated.The state was expected to end the biennium next year with a more than $150 million surplus, but Senate Republican Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) says that’s likely to change when the Legislative Fiscal Bureau releases new numbers this week.
Noted: But the Governor is still fighting the release of other records that shed light on the process his administration went through when it altered the Wisconsin Idea – a part of the UW System’s mission statement – as it put together the 2015-16 state budget early last year.
In the initial release of his budget plan, Gov. Walker changed the UW System’s mission to “meet the state’s workforce needs.” He also proposed striking language about public service and improving the human condition, and deleting the phrase: “Basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.”
Gov. Walker scrapped the changes after a strong public reaction against them, blaming it on a “drafting error.”
A center that focuses on clean energy research will continue operating at the University of Wisconsin-Madison after a $3.5 million grant from the school’s research foundation.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s grant to the Wisconsin Energy Institute was announced Tuesday [Dec. 22].
A University of Wisconsin System task force has finalized new tenure rules. The Wisconsin State Journal reported Thursday that the task force wrapped up work Wednesday. The task force is expected to forward the policy to the Board of Regents’ education committee by February. The full board is expected to vote on the plan in March.
A contentious rewrite of tenure rules for the state’s public university faculty has advanced to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, months after lawmakers stripped tenure protections from state law.
A task force charged with recommending a UW System policy to replace tenure provisions wiped from state law in Gov. Scott Walker’s latest budget wrapped up their work Wednesday uncertain if they had restored protections to academic freedom.
UW-Madison officials say the campus has seen an increase in the number of professors entertaining job offers from competing universities.
The UW System Tenure Policy Task Force, the body charged with writing new faculty protections, plans to meet Wednesday afternoon to review draft policies that outline layoff protections for tenured faculty and the review process professors must go through after they have received tenure.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation will provide $3.5 million to fill a budget hole and help a hub for energy research keep operating at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Funding for the Wisconsin Energy Institute had been cut in the state budget lawmakers approved this summer. Gov. Scott Walker removed the funding as part of a proposal to cut back state support for the university system and give it more autonomy.
Representatives Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) and Terese Berceau (D-Madison) held a news conference on Monday to announce a proposed piece of legislation that would bring back shared governance to the University of Wisconsin System. This proposed bill aims to improve the status of faculty, staff, and students within the UW System. If passed it would mean a return to students, faculty, and staff being decision makers on campus, not simply advisers to campus chancellors, as is now the case.
Shared governance in the UW System was removed by Wisconsin state legislators during the last passed budget.
The bill will bring statutory language back to what it was before it was changed in Gov. Scott Walker’s 2015-2017 budget to downgrade the role of faculty, staff and students from “active participants” to advisory.
Citing what it sees as systematic abandonment of the state’s largest city, faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Monday called for an immediate change to the way state funding is divided among Wisconsin’s two research universities.
If UWM’s per-student funding from the UW System were increased to just half the level that UW-Madison receives, it would yield an additional $23.6 million and eliminate UWM’s structural budget deficit, according to the UWM chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
While UW-Madison receives more than $12,400 per student, UWM receives less than $5,200 per student — 40% of UW-Madison’s per-student allocation.
