UW System officials, policymakers, experts and students gathered Wednesday at James Madison Memorial High School to discuss the upcoming state budget and what it might mean for higher education in the state.
As the university and the state look to the upcoming biennial budget, concerns exist that the UW System could again be on the chopping block for public funding. Gov. Scott Walker approved a $250 million cut to the system’s coffers in the last budget, and while officials are more optimistic this time around, the last budget exposed a major ideological rift on the subject of higher education in the Badger State.
Walker also controversially attempted to alter the Wisconsin Idea, the state’s mission statement for higher learning, by striking the words “the search for truth” and replacing them with language about workforce needs.
“If all we’re talking about is how do we force the university to be more economically efficient with the workers that is its creative force, we’ve sort of lost the general idea of what it means to be a great university,” said Dale Schultz, a former Republican state senator from Richland Center.
Schultz said “alarm bells” should be ringing after faculty at schools across the state passed no-confidence votes in the system when UW System President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents made drastic tenure changes early last spring. He urged Wisconsin residents as well as legislators to play their part in creating better morale.
Walker has also hinted that next year’s budget will include some amount of performance-based funding for the UW System. While the exact formula has yet to be devised, 30 states use a similar system weighing graduation rates, GPA and job placement to dole out funds. The state’s technical colleges already use performance-based funding.
“This is a rhetorical tool that has been politically popular across the country to justify increases or explain decreases in state support for higher education,” said UW-Madison professor Nicholas Hillman. “But tying money to some sort of indicator that has so many unknown quantities is a challenge.”
Associated Students of Madison Vice Chair Mariam Coker added that assessing performance based on measures like GPA may close off other more important factors that should be addressed before students are sent into the workforce.
“It’s kind of obvious that GPA is not the sole factor in success in life. We need to place less of an importance on it and more of an importance on interpersonal-type
