[media-credit name=’BEN CLASSON/Herald photo’ align=’alignright’ width=’336′][/media-credit]Saying the University of Wisconsin is lagging behind other Big Ten schools in retaining students, Vice Chancellor Darrell Bazzell unveiled a plan Monday to increase the university's student retention rate by 5 percent.

Although below some its Big Ten peers, UW-Madison's current student retention rate of 80 percent is higher than the UW System average of 63 percent.

However, Bazzell said he would like UW-Madison to raise its student retention rate to 85 percent within a few years to bring it more in line with other Big Ten schools that have retention rates of 90 percent.

Bazzell discussed the student retention issue while updating university staff on the current state of the UW budget during a meeting with the Madison Academic Staff Association Monday afternoon.

Assistant Director of State Relations Don Nelson said the plan to increase student retention rates could not be done by any one specific action but instead by the general support of all the elements in the budget that helped get the rate up to 80 percent in the first place.

"There is no specific provision in the budget to get us there — it is just a general support overall," Nelson said. "We want to increase support or at least stabilize support in those particular areas that we are already using to already support an 80 percent graduation rate."

Faculty retention rates were also a big issue, as the number of written proposals from other universities asking professors to leave UW has doubled in the last five years, Bazzell said.

With a current faculty retention rate of 57 percent, Bazzell said UW would like to raise it to 80 percent.

An additional $10 million on top of the $5 million usually allocated to help UW retain faculty has been included in Gov. Jim Doyle's biennial budget proposal. The extra money would help the university match offers from universities vying for UW professors.

"These are faculty members who are highly coveted, who we fear losing, who we know others are going after," Bazzell said. "This is a pot of money to help deal with that."

Along with normal faculty retention concerns, UW has recently been under scrutiny for its lack of domestic partnership benefits.

Also at Monday's forum, several faculty members voiced their concerns of losing key faculty due to their lack of compensation.

"Domestic partner benefits allow same-sex couples what every other Big Ten university offers already included in their [compensation] package," UW Controller Al Benzschawel said. "By not allowing them these benefits, we're losing dedicated people in the process."

Bazzell agreed that DPB are another way to increase faculty retention.

"We know for our campus, [DPB] has an impact on our campus climate, and it has a real impact on our ability to attract and actually retain a lot of our faculty members," Bazzell said.

In addition to the discussion about retention, Bazzell also explained faculty "decoupling," where academic faculty would be distinguished from the rest of the faculty.

Roughly 18,000 out of 20,000 employees of University of Wisconsin are part of the academic faculty — the other 2,000 are all professors, according to Bazzell.

The change would allow UW to increase salaries for faculty and academic staff separately, Bazzell said.