Give the Wisconsin Compact some teeth.
Last Wednesday, the Joint Finance Committee handed UW System an additional $46.1 million cut in the form a budget lapse, continuing the deleterious trend of divestment from public higher education and...
View ArticleThe Wisconsin Retirement System: The attack against it. How to protect it.
Readers whose retirement plans involve the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS) may be interested in these upcoming presentations/forums sponsored by the WUU and AFSCME: “The WRS: The attack against it....
View ArticleResponding to decreased state support: A modest proposal.
The Commission on Faculty Compensation and Economic Benefits has issued its annual report for 2011-2012 [PDF]. The commission rightly identifies a looming crisis in compensation for faculty and staff...
View ArticleAnecdotes don’t reflect UW reality
“Students should be working 40 hours a week, but these days they are taking off work to hang out with their friends and then are abusing Badger Care and the food pantries. Students need to pay...
View ArticleKeep collective bargaining and the civil service system at UW-Madison.
A year ago, thousands of UW-Madison students, faculty, and staff marched to the Capitol to oppose Governor Walker’s radical attempts to destroy Wisconsin’s 50-year tradition of collective bargaining....
View ArticleThe continued marketization of UW-Madison.
This article has been cross-posted from the The Education Optimists at the request of the author. – Ed. Last year, I wrote extensively about efforts led by former Chancellor Biddy Martin and her...
View ArticleRecommendations from the Academic Staff Executive Committee for the HR Design...
The Academic Staff Executive Committee (ASEC) has provided S&W with a document with the following title: Recommendations from the Academic Staff Executive Committee for the HR Design Phase I Work...
View ArticleA Charter School for the University of Wisconsin? Questions about the new UW...
Two events, each with potentially great repercussions for public higher education, came out of the blue last week. While one – the ouster of the President of the University of Virginia – was closely...
View ArticleThe missing message about universities and society.
The role of public higher education in a rapidly changing world rose to prominence last week with two developments: the University of Virginia’s governance debacle (see local commentary here) and the...
View ArticleReframing the conversation about tuition.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank has spoken recently of the desirability of raising out-of-state tuition to help make ends meet on the UW-Madison campus. Her proposal offers one of the few potentially viable...
View ArticleComments and questions about the discussion of splitting the UW System from...
If you haven’t done so, please read today’s WI State Journal article, “Splitting UW System, UW-Madison from state being discussed at Capitol,” which I pasted below and once you do so then consider the...
View ArticleSifting and Winnowing comes out of mothballs.
In light of the tremendous challenges dire emergency facing the University of Wisconsin in the form of Governor Walker’s proposed $300 million budget cut to UW System and creation of a new public...
View ArticleA call to pay attention and engage.
You must delve more deeply into the governor’s proposals to cut the UW-System budget by $300 million in the coming biennium and to spin off the university from the state as a public authority (a...
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The history of tuition and state support at UW-Madison
Many people are understandably confused by arguments concerning declines in state support, increases in tuition, and total support available for the instructional mission of the university. This...
View ArticleJFC goes nuclear in the war on the University of Wisconsin
On Friday afternoon, a neutron bomb was lobbed in the rapidly escalating war on the University of Wisconsin. The Joint Finance Committee revealed, and then quickly approved, an omnibus budget motion...
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The university and the public service – the Wisconsin Idea
The following article from 1911 makes painfully clear how the relationship between Wisconsin GOP leaders and the University of Wisconsin has radically changed relative to a century ago. (via Google...
View ArticleWhen it’s not just the faculty voting ‘no confidence’
True to form, Governor Walker continues to ramp up the inflammatory and factually baseless public rhetoric against UW faculty in the wake of votes of no confidence that have now passed in Madison, La...
View ArticleA cost-saving measure for UW System
With the departure of Jim Villa, the Vice President for University Relations who led the UW System’s communications and lobbying efforts during the critical budget negotiations of Spring 2015, we have...
View ArticleThe question Mike Gousha did not ask of Ray Cross
Last Sunday morning, UW System President Ray Cross gave a TV interview on “UpFront with Mike Gousha” concerning the recent no-confidence votes at six UW campuses. From the Cap Times writeup: Cross said...
View ArticleQuestions left unanswered by President Cross’s TV interview – another view.
In a TV interview on May 17, 2016, UW System President Ray Cross reacted to the no-confidence votes spreading throughout the System that call on the President and the Board of Regents “to recommit...
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