University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of two UW System schools that will face the largest total cuts in terms of raw dollars in the 2015-16 academic year, detailed in a UW System plan released Monday.
UW-Madison will take an almost $20.45 million reduction to its operating budget — which includes new revenue streams —for the next academic year to help account for the $250 million cut in state funding expected for the UW System over the next two years.
The campus facing the largest total reduction in terms of dollar amounts is UW-Milwaukee, which the plan states will lose $31.82 million over the 2015-16 academic year.
Not including new revenue streams, UW-Madison will take the largest cut from state aid of all UW System campuses, totaling nearly $59 million.
The Board of Regents is expected to approve this plan at their meeting in Madison Thursday.
The document contains no details concerning how the cuts will be spread at each school. The plan also does not include programs — like UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative— that will likely be slashed in the state budget separate from the overall cut.
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UW-Madison’s portion of the cut accounts for over 40 percent of the overall reduction in state funding. Despite the likely possibility the budget will freeze in-state tuition until 2017, the Board of Regents approved the first two years of a plan by UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca and other campus officials to up out-of-state tuition by $10,000 over the next two years.
Certain graduate school program tuitions will also increase.
UW-Madison’s out-of-state tuition will increase by $10,000 over next four years
The change would mean a .75 percent decrease for UW-Madison’s budget for the coming academic year, but UW-Milwaukee faces steeper cuts percentage-wise. The UW-Milwaukee campus would lose 5.1 percent of their operating budget over the coming year.
UW Extension faces a $742,354 cut to its operating budget and the UW Colleges’ budget would be reduced by over $5 million. Other proposed campus cuts range from just over $2 million to just over $3 million, including new revenue.
These cuts were reduced after the Joint Finance Committee voted to restore $50 million from Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed $300 million cuts to the UW System over the next two years. According to the numbers released by the UW System Monday, the move restored $4 million for UW-Madison and $4.5 million for UW-Milwaukee.
