For many students, the significance of the daily thrust-and-parry of the political process is not a high priority. The Capitol building, despite its location at the other end of State Street, might as well be another universe. However, its relevance has never been greater.
As the state grapples with airtight budgets, lawmakers have been searching for ways to maintain the quality of the state university system as cheaply as possible. On the brink of the approval of the UW System budget, which will set the course of higher education in Wisconsin for the next two years, The Daily Cardinal went to some of the state's leaders--Gov. Jim Doyle, UW System President Kevin Reilly, Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls, who chairs the Higher Education and Tourism Committee, and Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, who sits on the Committee on Colleges and Universities--to see what they think the future holds for college students in Wisconsin.
It's how to contribute to the well-being and specifically the economic development of the state of Wisconsin in the interest in all of its citizens at a time when the state budgets have been very tight and tough. ... How do we help the state grow the kinds of high-paying jobs that will attract and use the education and talents of our own baccalaureate graduates and will help attract baccalaureate degree- holders from out of this state to jobs in Wisconsin?
To increase our per capita income. The university obviously plays a role in increasing the number of four-year graduates that we have in our state. We are considerably lower than many other states in the region. I think meeting the challenges of the workforce as well as funding issues, of course, are going to be a challenge.
There are three challenges: adequate funding, accessibility-especially for middle-income and lower-income students-and the third is avoiding political interference. I think the university more than ever is truly the future of the state and that's because it's probably right now the state's biggest asset, but funding has been lagging, hurting both the quality of the education and the accessibility, as tuition has increased and financial aid hasn't kept pace. The third issue, the political interference, is seen where, for example, the legislature has threatened to stymie research into stem cells.
I believe it's reasonable. To put it into some context, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, even if there's a 5 to 7 percent tuition increase, will be either the lowest or the second-lowest tuition in the Big Ten. ... We continue to be a low-tuition state. And I think that's a good thing, and we should continue to try to make sure we are in the lower half of Big Ten schools.
Are we concerned about tuition? Yes. Is our tuition still relatively reasonable? We are still among the cheapest tuition when you look at our public university peers. ... Do I see tuition going down anytime soon or staying flat? Well, no, I don't see it that way although the Board of Regents is very interested in looking at a variety of different ways of approaching tuition policy.
I'm extremely concerned about the escalating level of tuition. One of the great things about the university is it has provided opportunity for students regardless of their family's financial circumstances. That great tradition of opportunity is under deep threat as tuition has skyrocketed.
As a public university, we do not want to [price out students]. The reason public universities and colleges were invented in this country was to open the doors to higher education to the poorer families. ... Part of the problem is that especially poor families suffer from sticker shock when they see the dollar numbers of the higher tuitions we now have, and they say, 'Oh no, we can't afford to do that.'
If my budget [proposal] is adopted, we will have doubled financial aid over the last 4 years. ... We've had to do that in the face of the federal government really backing away from financial assistance, and in some ways, what's happened here is the state of Wisconsin is having to step in and kind of plug some of the holes and get some more assistance available because Pell Grants ... are not as available as they were to as many people. But the way you deal with people's lower income is by financial assistance.
I think we're at the point of students not being able to pursue higher education due to economic reasons.
What university systems are seeing across the country are challenges. We are not unique by any means. The challenges are tight budgets and how to deal with that. ... The university, I commend them for stepping up to the plate and doing everything they could to maintain their programs and manage the cuts as we dealt with a $3.2 billion shortfall.
This budget will be better for the university than the last budget. It's hard to imagine it could be worse. There will be a very modest increase in support for the university. ... Our status as one of the best universities in the country is threatened if we don't step up and fund the university adequately, making up for past cuts.
Compared to the last biennium where we took a $250 million cut, we will certainly, I anticipate, come out better than that. ... [Doyle] has proposed that we reallocate a bunch of money within the system to hire 125 new faculty members. Hiring those new faculty members is a good thing-we want to do that-but we're going to have to reallocate by eliminating a significant number of administrative positions, probably over 200. That's going to hurt because certainly some of those positions are folks who provide direct services to students in areas like financial aid counseling and career counseling and other areas. We're increasingly thin on those academic and student support services, and we'll get thinner. Have the series of cuts hurt quality in the system? Absolutely it has.
