If the deep cuts to the UW System in the state’s last budget are maintained, education programs at UW-Madison will be cut 4 percent across the board, Chancellor Rebecca Blank said in a meeting with student media Thursday.
“That’s a big cut at a university like this,” she said.
Budget issues were a reoccurring concern as Blank and Dean of Students Lori Berquam fielded questions from campus press.
After Republicans expressed outrage over the news that the UW System was holding large cash reserves, the Gov. Scott Walker administration approved a 2013-’15 budget with deep cuts to the UW System.
UW-Madison was able to offset the cuts by dipping into the reserves, but there is not enough of a surplus to last through the next years, Blank said.
Walker sent a letter to state agencies in July expressing a “zero growth” policy, saying besides adjustment for inflation, agencies should not increase budget requests in the 2015-’17 biennium.
However, in August, the UW System Board of Regents sent a budget proposal to the governor that included $95.2 million in new state funds. The governor will use the proposal to present a budget to the legislature in February.
In the meantime, Blank discussed ways to raise money. She voiced support for a tuition freeze for Wisconsin students that is being advocated by Walker and UW System President Raymond Cross. She added, however, that a tuition freeze without accounting for inflation was not a sustainable plan.
Blank also reiterated her recent remarks about upping out-of-state tuition for undergraduate and graduate programs. UW-Madison undergraduates from outside of Wisconsin and Minnesota now pay $26,660 per year. Out-of-state students at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, in comparison, pay $41,811.
Although she doesn’t want UW-Madison to lead the Big Ten, Blank said the university’s out-of-state tuition falls more than $2000 below average.
“We are not at the bottom of quality in the Big Ten,” Blank said.
She added that she is working to create “a deeper pool of financial aid dollars” through an alumni fundraising campaign to offset any tuition increases.
The two administrators also responded to the “Yes Means Yes” law that recently passed in California, which legally redefines consent as an affirmative and clear statement, rather than the absence of resistance. Both Blank and Berquam said they did not have any immediate desire to see a similar bill in Wisconsin.
Berquam said some recent sexual assault legislation has not yet been implemented on campus and that there are already some contradictions between different policies.
“I’d kind of like to maybe slow down just a little bit and make sure that the ‘why’ we’re doing it is as important as what we’re doing,” Berquam said.
Blank said she’d also like to see data on the efficacy of the “Yes Means Yes” legislation before considering something similar. Both Blank and Berquam, however, expressed support for the California law’s emphasis on consent.
“Consent has to be at the core of what we do,” Berquam said.
