Couldn’t agree more…let’s actually invest in our advisors and student service personnel at UW-Madison…because they get paid squat for being at one of the most prestigious schools in the nation. There is some disconnect.

In other news, ‘Is it time to buy a house? Local realtor says yes.’

I agree that UW-Madison advisers should be paid more. They are woefully underpaid.

I also agree that the salaries, advancement opportunities, and benefits for advisers and most classified staff of the university is absolutely dismal. This is a huge problem, because many of these classified staff are at the front lines in dealing with students and getting things done every day. More conversion to Academic Staff (when applicable) perhaps?

What I DO NOT want to see, however, is money from the Undergraduate Initiative (if passed by the regents) going toward increasing advising budgets. Increasing salaries is one thing, but adding more advisers and resources is another. In my experience, there are a large amount of students who go through the entirety of their collegiate careers only seeing their adviser once or twice.

Use this money toward re-adding faculty, academic staff, updating labs & equipment, creating new courses, etc. These are things that benefit ALL students equally. Don’t punish those students who can read major requirements themselves and figure out what classes they need to take all on their own. This is often the majority of students.

Advising is extremely valuable, but only to those students who need it. To those who don’t, it ranks as one of the lowest priorities.

As an senior advisor for non-traditional students with the University of Wisconsin Colleges, I work hard to add value to student education and experiences. Working closely with an advisor can save students both extra semesters of college and thousands of dollars in the process - not to mention the additional learning gained with a properly balanced educational experience.

As more student arrive to the 4-year campuses with multiple previous college backgrounds (sometimes 4 or more different colleges), it will be even more important to work with professional and other support staff in connecting all the dots for a degree - advisors play a key role in making this happen.

Chris Beloin, UW Washington County - chris.beloin@uwc.edu

I definitely agree that an improvement to the advising system is needed. I was unable to get any definite answers from my advisor and have three friends all who have had their own problems with advising. One has been unable to find an advisor and has gotten conflicting stories as to what she should do, one was helped more by me than his actual advisor, and one has an advisor for the wrong major and is at this moment trying to enroll in classes but it’s locked by his advisor. There needs to be an emphasis on improving these problems!

I Agree

As a current student, I think it would be useful to have a website devoted to student experiences with courses and a searchable central database of all course evaluations. Perhaps some connection with alumni would also help. This would keep the information fresh and relevant to those who are looking for extra advice, while being inexpensive to implement. There are similar websites that offer students’ views of courses from across the nation, but I believe an unbiased site through UW would provide more value and be very popular among the student body.