Category: State budget

The University of Wisconsin Stevens Point will feel the impact of additional cuts made by Governor Scott Walker’s veto pen.

After Governor Scott Walker proposed a $300 million cut to the UW System, the legislature reduced the proposed amount by $50 million.

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents approved a $6 billion budget Thursday that incorporates millions of dollars in cuts from the Legislature. Before voting, the regents worried about the effects of deep cuts on the UW System.

“At what point do we say ‘ouch’?” Regent Jose F. Vasquez asked.

A proposal to weaken faculty tenure protections in the University of Wisconsin System remains among the many controversial issues in the budget now headed to Gov. Scott Walker’s desk.

The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents hasn’t forgotten about possible changes to tenure policy: At its meeting Thursday, regents checked in on the progress of a tenure task force created earlier this summer.

Cuts to the University of Wisconsin system as part of the proposed budget will mean layoffs and the reduction of positions through attrition at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

The University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh faces a $7.4 million budget cut, but administrators have taken action to divvy up the cut over three years.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Two conservative UW professors say Scott Walker’s proposed changes to tenure could leave conservatives on campus vulnerable.

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.”

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.

The timing could not be worse for new state-by-state faculty tenure rates to be released by the National Center for Education Statistics.

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.