The Badger Herald

NEWS

‘No guarantee’ in UW success

Looking for a print version?
Simply choose ‘Print’ on your computer and a printer-friendly document will be generated.

Also by Carl Jaeger:

Many eager to pick chancellor (December 11, 2007)
Officials debate Wiley's legacy (December 10, 2007)
'No guarantee' in UW success (December 10, 2007)
New rules apply for UW seg fees (December 7, 2007)
Regents hear about booze, textbooks (December 7, 2007)

by Carl Jaeger

Monday, December 10, 2007

The University of Wisconsin-Madison will be facing challenges in upcoming years, according to a presentation given by UW-Madison Provost Patrick Farrell at a UW System Board of Regents meeting Friday.

Farrell compared UW-Madison to other schools, including Harvard University, Yale University, the University of California-Los Angeles and the University of Michigan, and said competition is rising and UW-Madison's financial disadvantage is becoming more evident.

"We're an extraordinarily successful university, but there's no guarantee that that will continue," Farrell said. "To attain and maintain that level of excellence requires internal effort, discipline and focus, and we need your help. We cannot do this by ourselves."

Farrell said the regents could play an important role in helping UW-Madison see the kind of success that it currently has in the future.

"We have a lot of opportunities, and without sounding too jingoistic, we have opportunities that Harvard doesn't have," Farrell said. "What they don't have is the kind of students we have, both the quantity and, in a certain sense, the quality. They don't have the culture we have."

Farrell said UW-Madison's reputation could be maintained by understanding the differences between past and future successes, building partnerships and extracting more value from existing investments.

Board of Regents President Mark Bradley said he was impressed by Farrell's presentation.

"Instead of saying these are problems and asking for pity, he said, 'These are problems, and here is how we are beginning to address them,' and I think that's a sign of good management," Bradley said.

Bradley, who has two degrees from UW-Madison, said he has always compared the university to some of the most elite private schools in the country and said UW-Madison has a culture that is different from other schools.

"The test for that is to talk to mid-level and senior professors who have started their careers at other campuses and came here … [and] ask them what part of the package that you accepted attracted you," Bradley said. "It isn't the salary. It might be the facilities, but almost always the ability to work with colleagues and it's the ability to work with top-notch graduate students."

Regent Brent Smith said the UW System and UW-Madison must keep looking toward the future in order to stay competitive in the high-education environment that is rapidly changing.

"On the one hand, there's a lot of pride in being able to show that we are certainly on that level," Smith said. "But on the other hand, it really opens your eyes up to know the private investment that is there for those particular ones and how difficult it is for us to compete against those, dollar-wise."

The regents also continued their conversation on segregated fees from Thursday's meeting.

Regent Jeffrey Bartell, who said he disapproved of UW System President Kevin Reilly's decision to not allow the fees to fund non-UW employee salaries and pay off-campus rent for student organizations Thursday, said he had reconsidered his feelings.

Bartell said he spoke with Farrell, who assured him the UW-Madison administration will work with the organizations affected by the policy changes, but added if the new policies do not work out, "the issues will be before the board."

The regents also heard an update on the Growth Agenda for Wisconsin and approved both a "differential tuition initiate" for UW-La Crosse and a new policy requiring UW System faculty to more accurately report sick leave.

Feedback

Show all comments

Hide anonymous comments

Anonymous (December 17, 2007 @ 7:36pm):

With Wiley now on his way out, UW needs to
clean up the grade fraud scandal in the
Department of Political Science. Wiley
tried to cover it up, and that backfired.
It's a massive crisis threatening to des-
troy the entire UW.

Anonymous (December 19, 2007 @ 1:00pm):

Yes. The PS department scandal is really
bad, and closely linked to the Paul Barrows
case. Barrows is writing a book about this
mess, so it is imperative that the new chan-
cellor fix this problem 100%. Otherwise,
the situation here will get much worse.

Anonymous (December 21, 2007 @ 2:47pm):

Well, Farrell obviously wants to be the next
chancellor. Does he know about the crisis
in the Department of Political Science?

Add a comment

We welcome your thoughts, but please keep your feedback thoughtful, on-topic and respectful. Offensive language, personal attacks, or irrelevant comments may be deleted.