We need a free-thinking University of Wisconsin now more than ever. What transpires in the next few months between our state Capitol and UW, just 2,000 human paces apart, may determine our “human condition” the next 2,000 years.
Dear Editor: Why would anyone want to destroy a $15 billion economic engine for the state? That is an absolutely great return on a $1.2 billion investment as a state we make.
Walker was also asked by Chatham House moderator, Justin Webb of the BBC, why his budget rewrote the UW’s mission statement to delete what’s known as the Wisconsin Idea. “Well how did you get in this mess though about changing its sort of — its stated purpose?” Webb asked. “I don’t want to get into too much detail and sort of bore people who don’t know a lot about the University of Wisconsin and I certainly don’t, but you’ve fiddled with something that a lot of people felt very strongly about. Do you regret it?”
Walker was asked about that prospect at the Chatham House think tank in London and floated the idea of permanent caps on tuition. “I think there’s some lawmakers in the state Legislature that want to put in the statutes — I’d be open to that — to permanently putting in place some sort of a cap on tuition,” said Walker.
The state’s biennial budget may not be finalized until May or June, but layoffs as a result of Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed $300 million cut to the University of Wisconsin System could hit UW-Madison as soon as April, Chancellor Rebecca Blank announced Wednesday.
The blanket exemption in Walker’s budget from open records laws for UW researchers could lead to abuse and public distrust.
Quoted: Karma Chávez, associate professor of communication arts.
“We need to decide whether affordable and high-quality public universities are the vital resource they have always been to Wisconsinites, or if the UW System is worth giving up, to be replaced by something inferior, or to shut down access in some parts of the state altogether,” Chavez said. “Clearly the Walker administration has chosen the latter.”
It’s hard to believe that Gov. Scott Walkers proposal to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin System’s budget over the next two years would allow the system to maintain its quality. Walker would prohibit the university system from raising tuition during that period, but instead give university officials more flexibility in managing contracting and construction projects.
After seeing tuition skyrocket after the public university system was given more autonomy, leaders are looking for a different strategy.
New today from PolitiFact Wisconsin: With Gov. Scott Walker’s 2015-17 budget introduced, we turn to the Walk-O-Meter for an early look at several education-related promises from the 2014 campaign, including ones on private-school vouchers, Common Core standards and college tuition freezes for tech schools and the UW System.
While Gov. Scott Walker is on a trade mission in London, his administration threw a curveball at University of Wisconsin System leaders upset by $300 million in proposed state budget cuts over the next two years.
The Wisconsin State Journal Editorial Board captured the prevailing opinion last weekend when it called the jaw-dropping $300 million cut to the University of Wisconsin “inexplicable.” Unfortunately, the board is wrong. There is a plausible vision behind what Gov. Scott Walker is trying to do, which makes his proposal much more dangerous than a simple misunderstanding of university operations.
It’s not a done deal that the University of Wisconsin System will have to find $300 million in cuts over the next two years if Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget stands in the Legislature.
A large, standing room-only UW-Madison faculty and staff audience heard Chancellor Rebecca Blank apologize late Wednesday night as she warned layoffs under Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal were unavoidable and could come as early as April.
Huebsch told reporters Tuesday the error is something that would have been found and corrected in the errata document that is compiled after the publication of every two-year budget.
A top official in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration defended the Republican governor’s budget proposal to cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin System on Tuesday, saying that the System would soon have autonomy to deal with the funding reductions.
I am writing to thank you for your commitment to preserving the excellence and integrity of the University of Wisconsin System. As a native Wisconsinite, I have always felt tremendous pride that our humble, decent state has created and sustained one of the world’s premier institutions of higher learning and a state system that is the envy of the rest of the nation.
UW-Eau Claire and UW-Stout have no plans to follow UW-Madison’s lead and petition its alumni, parents and students to write to legislators and announce their oppositions to Gov. Scott Walker’s budget cuts.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank will host a series of forums this week to discuss Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed cuts to the UW System budget.
UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank will host a series of forums on Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget that she says would leave the campus with a $91 million shortfall next year.
One observer says presidential hopefuls might raise the issue, thinking it could hurt Gov. Walker in polls. Another stunned that Wisconsin is talking cuts.
Gov. Walker clearly stepped in it when his administration attempted to quietly slip into the budget substantive statutory language changes to what is known as the “Wisconsin Idea.”
All of the University of Wisconsin campuses face difficult personnel decisions in the wake of Gov. Scott Walker’s call for a $300 million System-wide cut in taxpayer support for the 2015-2017 biennium.
EDITOR: The proposed 2015 biennial budget not only will make it considerably more difficult for Wisconsinites to attend any and all University of Wisconsin campuses but it will also eliminate citizen voice and control in the UW governing process.
Gov. Scott Walker’s budget achieved an unusual result in a Legislature that has been so politically divided: It united a handful Democrats and Republicans who oppose some of the proposals.
I’m honored to be serving the friends and neighbors of the 69th Assembly District! I’m also delighted to be taking part in the first budget process since my election over a year ago.
Invoking the spirit of the “uprising” that occupied the Wisconsin Capitol in 2011, UW-Madison faculty and staff are planning a rally and march on Saturday, Valentine’s Day, to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget cuts to the UW System.
I really hope the state budget wraps up soon, because I don’t know how much more flippant politicking I can take from Wisconsin’s governor/presidential candidate — nor how much more righteous indignation I can take from the officials of multimillion UW-Madison and its billion-dollar parent institution, the UW System.
While the shift isn’t generating the amount of publicity as Walker’s plan to make the Natural Resources Board advisory, the change is significant since it consolidates key borrowing decisions within the Department of Administration, including bonding for transportation purposes. Under the Walker budget, the Building Commission would no longer meet in order to approve projects or the borrowing to make them happen. The commission — which by statute includes members of both political parties and is chaired by the governor — has traditionally met monthly. Instead, the commission would operate under what the budget proposal calls a “passive review process” where items are considered approved unless a majority of Building Commission members request a meeting.
Among the many other non-budgetary and bad policy items in Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed biennial state budget, theres this: The governor is asking for a measure that could be used to hide certain research in the University of Wisconsin System. Two previous efforts in the last two years to thwart public access to such research failed, one rejected by the Joint Finance Committee and one by an Assembly committee.
It’s probably only fair to point out, though, that UW-Madison profs might also be suffering from comparatively low wages because so darn many have been promoted to the highest pay category, but there’s only so much money to go around.
Jo Ellen Fair recalls being shaken when she read through Gov. Scott Walker’s 1,800-page budget bill this week and saw that the state law creating shared governance and tenure at the University of Wisconsin would be wiped out if Walker’s plan is approved by the Legislature.
The governor is proposing a $2.5 million cut in state funding each year over the next two years to the Educational Communications Board, which spends about $19 million a year.
[T]he proposal by the Walker administration to strike statutory language directing the UW to focus on “public service” and “the search for truth” has turned out to be a healthy development for the state.
For starters, lawmakers should ease the university cut. The governor pitched his historic reduction to the 26-campus System as a trade. UW would lose state aid in exchange for more autonomy from state rules.
In a TV interview on “UpFront with Mike Gousha,” Cross said that the cuts proposed in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget could “seriously damage the whole system,” and that he doesn’t think they are inevitable.
McWilliams is a former chair of the Associated Students of Madison.
Gov. Scott Walker’s budget plans to cut or consolidate state agencies includes the elimination of an obscure board that mainly regulates for-profit schools and some nonprofit institutions from out of state.
In a week that Gov. Scott Walker’s “drafting error” claim for his budget re-write of the UW System mission statement drew a Pants On Fire rating from fact checker PolitiFact Wisconsin, the 2016 GOP presidential aspirant drew plenty of national attention.
A few dozen protesters showed up at the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents this morning in Madison to respond to news of potential layoffs and what they consider a proposed “privatization” of the state public higher education system.
Guess the source of this quote: “There is no profession in the world, anywhere in the world, where if you work for seven years you get a lifetime guarantee of a job. Except at a university…If you have tenure at a university, by the time you are 35 you never have to prove yourself again.”
Chancellors in the University of Wisconsin System are harnessing the power of the Internet to rally their campuses, alumni and parents of students for what could be a long battle over proposed state budget cuts.
I admit to being agnostic when it comes to whether Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget cuts to the University of Wisconsin system are a good idea. I want the university to thrive, as I suspect most Wisconsinites do.
Something called “The Wisconsin Idea” got a lot of attention this week when a nonprofit discovered that Gov. Scott Walker’s state budget proposal would have removed it from the University of Wisconsin’s mission statement. It’s since been restored.
University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross said on Friday he doesn’t know how Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed $300 million cut would be spread across the 26 campuses.
University of Wisconsin-Superior will continue to receive financial support from the UW System, despite proposed cuts from Gov. Scott Walker.
MADISON — Gov. Scott Walker is fond of comparing his proposed $300 million cut to the University of Wisconsin System to Act 10, his signature legislation that restricted collective bargaining for public workers and sparked massive protests.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal could result in fewer classes and jobs at University of Wisconsin-Rock County.
WHITEWATER–UW-Whitewater Chancellor Richard Telfer cautions people from reading too much into Legislative Fiscal Bureau figures that show the university would be hit the hardest by the governor’s proposed budget.
UW-Stout Chancellor Bob Meyer said Tuesday night that the higher education cuts proposed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker “will present significant challenges for our campus and the entire UW System.”
As a senior at Wausau East High School in 2000, I made the decision to attend the University of Notre Dame. My friends’ parents questioned this move, asking me both seriously and in jest why I’d pay the hefty tuition of a private university when the University Wisconsin System was just as good and far more affordable.
Editorial board says: “The Wisconsin Legislature must resist the governor’s ideologically driven thrust at the state university system.”
In the aftermath of Gov. Scott Walker’s budget address, University of Wisconsin Chancellor Rebecca Blank spoke to the Board of Regents Thursday, saying Walker’s proposed cuts are “just too big.”
Enough is enough! I’ve been watching Gov. Scott Walker attack the beating heart of Wisconsin — the University of Wisconsin System — and it needs to end: now.
Governor Scott Walkers recent state budget announcement has been the talk of the town on UW-Madison campus this week. Tuesday afternoon Chancellor Rebecca Blank explained the situation to the UW Board of Regents.
A new report estimates University of Wisconsin campuses in Madison and Milwaukee would see the largest cuts of the UW System schools in the first year of Republican Gov. Scott Walkers state budget.
Gov. Scott Walker said Thursday he never intended to dramatically rewrite the University of Wisconsin Systems mission statement, even as a December email showed his administration clearly ordered that it drop a guiding principle known as the “Wisconsin Idea.”
“These cuts are too large. They’re too large for our university, and they’re too large for the state.”
Statement from Gov. Scott Walker:“We encourage a vigorous debate over the idea of an authority to govern the University of Wisconsin system or the status quo, as well as a debate about what is the real amount of savings that can be generated by an authority, which we believe is worth $150 million a year. However, there is no debate over the principles contained within the Wisconsin Idea. We are, and have been, in agreement.
Gov. Scott Walker acknowledged Thursday his administration botched the rewrite of the University of Wisconsin System’s mission statement in state law, blaming it on a miscommunication between his top aides and the state budget director’s office — which pushed the changes through even as top university officials objected.
