After receiving funding assurance from Gov. Scott McCallum, the UW System Board of Regents voted March 22 to lift the suspension on undergraduate admissions, easing the minds of anxious high school seniors nationwide.
UW System President Katharine Lyall mandated the admissions freeze three weeks ago in efforts to lessen the impact of a proposed $108 million budget cut on UW schools.
The Regents’ Executive Committee unanimously voted on the decision, which they said was a result of additional funding by Gov. McCallum and the Senate majority. The resolution instructed UW campuses to resume “their admissions processes and enroll up to, but not beyond, their instructional capacity for fall 2002.”
“The suspension of any further undergraduate admissions was the right thing to do given the uncertainty of the state budget process,” Jay Smith, Regent President said Friday, March 22. “But with the funding assurances we have received this week, we can get back to the business of admitting and educating students and maintaining the quality of the UW System.”
Lyall told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the decision to lift the freeze was not prompted by protests from students or lawmakers.
“It was because both the governor and the Senate Democrats have committed publicly to funding the students that we wanted to admit in the governor’s budget,” she said.
Smith and Lyall said 5,500 more full-time students could enroll in UW schools if the final budget cut is no more than the $51 million recommended by McCallum in his budget reduction package
“I urge us to maintain our focus on serving all students we admit well and recalibrate enrollment targets for fall 2003 and beyond, once our final budget is determined,” Lyall told the Executive Committee.
The Regents said that in accordance with rekindling admissions, Lyall must monitor system-wide enrollments and report their status to the board.
Smith said he hopes more funding can be found for the UW budget so that even more students can be admitted.
“Every additional student we can enroll is a plus for the state’s economic future,” Smith said. “To really help the state out of this economic slump, we should be enrolling more, not fewer, students.”
The impact of the freeze varied among UW campuses because some were further along than others.
At UW-Madison, 3,600 applicants will fight for 300 spots, Provost Peter Spear told the Capital Times. He said the university would admit more students on the assumption that some will not accept the admission. Out-of-state students are especially risky, he said, because of a proposed tuition hike.
“We’re going to cautiously open admissions again and watch how these factors develop,” Spear said.
A Marquette University High School senior told the Journal Sentinel he had been strongly considering schools outside the state before learning of the thaw.
“You’re kind of up in the air, and you want to be figuring out where you want to go to school since it’s only two months to graduation,” Brian Dolven said.
He expressed his relief that the freeze was over and final decisions were near.
“I guess I’ll be waiting for them, for whatever they’re going to send,” Dolven said. “Hopefully it will be soon.”
The UW hiring freeze was not lifted, Smith said, “to make sure that we do not commit more resources for next year than we are given by the state.”
Currently the thaw does not compensate for the full 8,100 slots that were originally frozen, but Lyall said the numbers might change with a favorable budget resolution.
