Addressing issues of tuition increases, faculty and staff salary gaps and federal financial aid cuts, UW System President Kevin Reilly met with student reporters from around the state Monday.
Focusing briefly on tuition, Reilly said he understands the gripes of students, such as the group currently undertaking a hunger strike at the Capitol to protest hikes that have been enacted the last several years.
\I realize they're trying to make a point by doing [the strike] and it's a point that we're really trying to make,"" Reilly said. ""There have been huge cuts to the university system over the last several biennia [and] as a result, tuition has gone up steeply in terms of percentages.""
Reilly said the system is asking both Gov. Doyle and the state Legislature to reinvest in the UW System so education can be accessible to as wide a range of students as possible.
But Reilly was quick to emphasize that UW-Madison's tuition is still what he considers reasonable compared to other Big Ten schools.
Reilly also spoke of how the UW System's faculty and staff salaries are still falling short of those of comparable institutions.
""We want to make sure to be able to recruit and retain the best teachers and the best advisors to interact with students across the system,"" he said of a needed salary increase.
According to Reilly, UW System faculty will enter the 2005-'07 biennium 7.6 percent below peer institutions in terms of pay and academic staff 17.7 percent below median salaries of peer institutions.
Reilly also expanded his focus to include President Bush's recent proposals to increase the need-based Pell Grant awards over the next five years. However, Reilly said the money to fund such an increase would come directly out of other financial aid and disadvantaged student programs that are vital to higher education accessibility in Wisconsin.
Reilly said such programs would be zeroed out in order to fund the Pell increase, divesting the UW System of approximately $40 million per year.
""This is of great concern to us and we made that clear to our senators and congresspeople and I think we got a good response,"" he said. ""On both sides of the political aisle they were saying 'well, we don't believe this will stand the way it is written.'\
