Gov. Scott Walker and state legislators from both sides of the aisle are calling for a full University of Wisconsin System tuition freeze after a state audit revealed the system is operating with a $648 million surplus of unrestricted funds.
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau report was released Friday and immediately sparked criticism from state officials who said the system’s lack of transparency was troubling and would lead them to reconsider the funding allotments to the UW System in Walker’s most recent biennial budget proposal.
Walker asked the state Legislature to freeze UW tuition for the next two years, according to an email from Tom Evenson, Walker’s press secretary. Walker said the students and families paying into the UW System “deserve a break,” according to Evenson.
Additionally, state Democrats, such as state Sen. Bob Wirch, D-Pleasant Prairie, have joined with Republicans in calling for a freeze.
“A tuition freeze is a small but necessary step in once again making education affordable,” Wirch said in a statement.
The tension over the surplus, 40 percent of which is funded by tuition dollars, spilled over into a state committee hearing Tuesday where top-ranking legislators altered a session originally devoted to discussing the system’s human resources plans to instead interrogate UW System President Kevin Reilly on the system’s reasoning behind keeping the tuition-bolstered surplus.
State Republicans, such as Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Burlington, and others who were present at Tuesday’s meeting, have also called on the system to implement a tuition freeze.
“I was totally mistaken in believing that the … UW System could control their own fiscal affairs,” Vos said at the Tuesday state hearing.
Walker has not commented on whether he will continue to recommend the $181 million funding increase to the UW System currently in his budget proposal.
