The Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education finished up a two-part seminar last week concerning the consequences of the increasing trend toward merit-based student aid.
Throughout the country, universities are beginning to shy away from financial-need-based aid, which is distributed based on family income, to academic-merit-based aid, which is based on grade-point average or extracurricular activities.
Prominent scholars from across the country spoke at last week's forum, including Donald Hellar, an associate professor and senior research associate at Pennsylvania State University, and Bridget Terry Long, an associate professor of economics and education at Harvard University.
WISCAPE has three major forums on the UW campus each semester, while simultaneously offering professional-education courses and working on various research projects.
"Having a program like WISCAPE provides us with an advantage because we have the privilege of being able to have forums concerning higher-level education issues," UW Vice Chancellor for Administration Darrell Bazzell said. "Not only does this provide us with information, but it allows us to make better policy choices."
WISCAPE gains a majority of its support from private funding, from profit and from state funding.
The focus of WISCAPE is concentrated on three programs: research, forums and professional education. The research program includes in-house and external studies performed by WISCAPE's own staff as well as faculty affiliates.
Forums discuss issues about the changing relationship between public universities and states and declining state funding for higher education.
Student access and persistence is also examined by measuring the number of students who actually get into college and how many of those students are of different races, socioeconomic backgrounds and genders. WISCAPE then studies how many of these students follow through until graduation.
"WISCAPE was created to address the fundamental challenges facing postsecondary education," WISCAPE Managing Director Henry Lufler said. "Through a variety of programs, we bring together education leaders, policymakers, researchers, students, faculty and staff to discuss these issues and propose solutions. The ultimate goal is to help participants gain a better understanding of how colleges and universities function, which will in turn help them make better leadership decisions."
Along with the research and forums, four to five professional-education courses are held each semester that are designed for faculty and staff on campus but are also attended by faculty and staff from private and technical colleges.
Next week, Bazzell himself will finish up the second half of his two-part seminar.
He will discuss a practical budgeting guide — specifically, how state budgets evolve, as well as how the UW System and UW-Madison campus manage their finances.
The mission of WISCAPE to better secondary education can be seen on campuses nationwide.
"Higher-education research centers appear [in] virtually every peer institution of UW-Madison — and within the top 10 schools of education, which includes Madison, about eight out of the 10 also have higher-education research centers," WISCAPE outreach program coordinator Nik Hawkins said.
WISCAPE continues to better participants' understanding of the complex structures of postsecondary education through research and instruction, forums, conferences and professional education.
