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.”
“Recent action by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee has the potential to threaten that longstanding commitment to fearless inquiry. I am worried about the risk this creates for UW-Madison, by alienating and demoralizing the faculty who have built this into one of the world’s finest education and research institutions. Abrupt changes to tenure and shared governance — another historic underpinning of UW-Madison — could drive away the people we most need to attract and retain. That these changes are being recommended without public discussion or consultation from those who will be most affected adds to our collective concern.”
Twenty-one scholarly groups led by the American Historical Association wrote on Thursday that they were “gravely concerned” about looming changes in tenure and shared governance in Wisconsin.
The Faculty Senate overwhelmingly approved a resolution asking Chancellor Rebecca Blank, UW System President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents to use “all means at their disposal” to remove a provision giving UW authorities more leeway to dismiss faculty from a motion inserted into Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee.
Four years after taking union rights away from teachers and other public workers in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker now wants to strip job protections for University of Wisconsin professors in a move he likens to the 2011 law that made him a national figure and set up his expected presidential run.
University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty members upset about what they consider to be a coordinated political assault on the UW System spent nearly two hours in a packed lecture hall Tuesday afternoon, reiterating that tenure isn’t about a guaranteed job for life, but about protecting academic freedom.
Conservative academics might be in greater jeopardy than the liberal-leaning colleagues who outnumber them if tenure is removed from Wisconsin state law, says John Sharpless, a longtime UW-Madison history professor and former Republican candidate for Congress
The UW-Madison Faculty Senate was nearly unanimous Tuesday as it called on lawmakers to strike budget language that would decrease faculty influence and make it easier for tenured professors to be fired. But faculty members appeared to be of two minds on the tone they should take with a Board of Regents that many don’t trust to do what they believe is the right thing.
Wisconsin counties have long relied on their University of Wisconsin cooperative extension to answer questions about and to encourage development in agriculture, horticulture, family living, youth and 4-H. However, the recent proposed UW System budget cut could mean Wisconsin counties lose from 65 to 80 of those local UW extension agents. Rural Wisconsin will be hardest hit.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison asked state lawmakers on Tuesday to reconsider proposed changes to job protections for tenured faculty that have come under fire from professors and others who see it as putting academic freedom and their jobs at risk.
Public colleges and universities in several states once again face the prospect of sharp budget cuts this year, and students say they have an important role to play in opposing them.
University of Wisconsin leaders moved forcefully on Monday to stem the fallout from lawmakers’ plans to strip tenure protections from state law as UW-Madison faculty planned an emergency meeting on the matter for Tuesday.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank said Monday she will work with faculty to quickly draw up tenure protections for the state’s flagship campus “that would be the equivalent of any of our peers.”
The University of Wisconsin (UW) system could, within the month, no longer have a nationally recognized tenure system.
Like many university leaders, Chancellor Rebecca Blank of the University of Wisconsin at Madison has had her ups and downs with the faculty. She butted heads with some professors in her support for a now-dead plan to make the university system into a more autonomous public authority, for example, but earned faculty praise when she defended professors against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s suggestion that faculty members might be shirking their teaching responsibilities.
The full University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted Friday to adopt a tenure policy to replace the one likely to be stricken from state statute, while rejecting one last opportunity to formally oppose planned Legislative changes to faculty terms of employment.
Changes to tenure and shared governance at University of Wisconsin System schools that were passed by the Legislatures Joint Finance Committee aren’t sitting well with university faculty members.
Channel 3000 contributor Bill Wineke, citing the huge cuts to the University of Wisconsin system, wonders if investors would buy stock in Wisconsin these days. The UW is the state’s biggest public asset, he says, and actions by this Legislature are weakening it, along with another huge asset, the states public schools. Investors, he adds, would be loathe to send money here.
On May 29, the Joint Finance Committee decided to fix the University of Wisconsin in its budget bill. The problem is, the university wasn’t broken.
Mahesh Mahanthappa and Gray Jackson both grew up far away from Wisconsin but came here to pursue their passion for chemistry at UW-Madison, a national leader in the field.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted unanimously Friday to add faculty tenure protections to regents policy in anticipation of them being dropped from state law.
Betty and I attended our granddaughter’s graduation ceremony in mid-May. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in four years, high GPA and no debts. It was a grand day, as graduation should be. The weather threatened early but cleared up for a few hours before the storms rolled in.
Another secrecy provision has been slipped into the state budget with virtually no discussion or public input.
Until I was sixteen-years-old, I thought the University of Wisconsin – Madison = “college.”
UW–Madison is the fourth-largest research institution in the nation, with awards in 2013 reaching more than $1.1 billion. For the past 20 years, it has ranked among the top five universities overall for research funding from various sources. It also ranks sixth of all the nation’s universities for patents received.
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents voted on Friday to add faculty tenure protections to its policies, as Wisconsin lawmakers consider eliminating similar protections from state statutes.
And to think we started this year with the goal of reinvigorating The Wisconsin Idea. Now we are afraid it is in danger of being destroyed.
Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal for weakening tenure at Wisconsin’s highly respected state university system and undermining the faculty’s role in campus governance will appeal to conservative voters whose support he needs to win the Republican presidential nomination.
The campus set is roiled again because state leaders have dared to challenge the concept of tenure for professors within the University of Wisconsin System.
The Board of Regents at the University of Wisconsin system moved closer to overseeing tenure rules for faculty, a week after a key legislative committee agreed to strip them from law in an escalating battle over higher education in the state. (Subscription required.)
Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, thinks he’s hit political pay dirt with his proposal to gut faculty tenure protections at his state’s public universities, notably the flagship University of Wisconsin, long one of the nation’s best state universities. His idea is to remove tenure protection from state law, and leave the actual policy to the Board of Regents, his political appointees.
The University of Wisconsin has weathered years of budget cuts, but many faculty members believe the elimination of tenure would be a tipping point. The elimination of tenure is being recommended in legislation adopted by the Joint Finance Committee. Quoted: Don Moynihan and Pamela Herd, both professors of public affairs.
My great-great-grandmother, Anna Norsman, graduated from UW-Madison in 1902. More than a century after she matriculated, I graduated from that very same school. A member of my immediate family graduated from UW-Madison every generation in between.
The UW System Board of Regents centered Thursday meeting discussion around a recent update to Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed state budget, which included a detailed description of a multiple-request motion passed during the May 29 Joint Finance Committee meeting.
Earlier this year, University of Wisconsin System president Ray Cross vowed at a UW-Milwaukee forum to resign if three conditions weren’t met by the state Legislature: a substantial reduction to Gov. Scott Walker’s $300 million budget cut and the preservation of faculty tenure and shared governance policies.
Another secrecy provision has been slipped into the state budget with virtually no discussion or public input.
Political Environment blogger James Rowen accuses the UW Regents of dodging their responsibility Thursday when they voted against asking the Legislature to remove the changes in UW tenure from the state budget. Instead the board decides to set up what Rowen calls a do-nothing task force solution.
Facing national attention and an onslaught of petitions and lobbying by University of Wisconsin professors, a Board of Regents committee on Thursday voted against formally opposing controversial changes to faculty tenure proposed by Republicans in the state Legislature, neglecting another motion asking lawmakers to strip the tenure changes from law.
A University of Wisconsin faculty member, who presented more than 2,500 petitions to the members of a UW Board of Regents committee Thursday asking them to restore protections to tenure imperiled in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget, said he was shocked when the panel voted to recommend a policy that gives administrators greater leeway to dismiss tenured faculty.
A Board of Regents committee advanced a policy change Thursday that gives the regents a greater role in the process of searching for campus leaders.
With angry faculty members from several campuses looking on, a committee of University of Wisconsin System regents voted Thursday to go along with the intent of Republican legislative leaders in broadening the reasons in which tenured faculty can be dismissed.
A Republican plan backed by Gov. Scott Walker to remove tenure for University of Wisconsin professors from state law has emerged as the latest battleground for public employees in Wisconsin.
Are Gov. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin legislature on their way to doing serious harm to the respected University of Wisconsin system?
CHICAGO — Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who began building a national profile four years ago by sharply cutting collective bargaining rights for most government workers, has turned his sights to a different element of the public sector: state universities.
With Wisconsin legislators poised to remove public university tenure from state statute, many faculty members were hopeful that a Board of Regents committee would respond forcefully Thursday. But the committee meeting ended with faculty leaders feeling that they had been let down.
University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross said Thursday he intends to stay in his job.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents is expected to finalize a policy on tenure for UW System faculty by the end of this week, after lawmakers proposed changes to the state’s tenure laws last Friday. Proponents say the changes would give university leaders better oversight of their employees, but the proposal has also made educators worried about the future of the state’s schools.
More than 360 professors who have won some of the university’s most prestigious research awards signed a letter they plan to send to the UW-System Board of Regents before their meeting Thursday.
Members of the Wisconsin legislature’s Joint Finance Committee voted last week on a bill that, if it passes the legislature, would cut $250 million from the state’s higher ed budget ($50 million short of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s request), eliminate tenure protections as a state statute and limit faculty participation in a highly-valued shared governance system at the state’s public universities.
Faculty advocates are up in arms over proposed legislation in Wisconsin calling for a sweeping overhaul of the state’s public-university system. The measure, passed by the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance as part of negotiations on the state budget, would greatly reduce faculty members’ say in the University of Wisconsin system’s affairs and scrap state laws providing them job protections such as tenure.
I am writing in hearty support of John Wiley’s rousing guest column Tuesday, “UW-Madison has put Wisconsin on the world map.” Former Chancellor Wiley shows how intentionally, for over a century, our university and its state leaders have helped create a world-class university, one that is known and admired throughout the country and around the globe.
The first half of John Wiley’s guest column Tuesday, “UW-Madison has put Wisconsin on the world map,” cannot be argued with. UW-Madison is positively known worldwide and its founding membership in Association of American Universities has been to its credit since 1900.
A state budget provision that makes changes to shared governance in the University of Wisconsin System is drawing fire from student government leaders.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will discuss changes to the System’s tenure policies at its meeting Thursday, a main point of discussion at a faculty and staff meeting at UW-Green Bay Wednesday.
The “fearless sifting and winnowing” that is the core of the Wisconsin Idea would be squelched by the erosion of support for tenure in state law proposed by legislative Republicans, say leaders of a lobbying organization of UW-Madison faculty.
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.
Already dismayed by prospective cuts to the University of Wisconsin System, higher education observers now suggest the state could become an academic pariah if the Legislature scales back two treasured tenets of academia — tenure and shared governance.
Everything that affects the university affects us all, and should be of concern to every Wisconsin citizen. This state has invested a great deal in the university since its very founding, and has a lot at stake in preserving that investment.
University of Wisconsin System faculty, staff and student government groups could soon lose influence on their campuses after Wisconsin’s Joint Finance Committee voted last week to change shared governance laws.
