Heads of each University of Wisconsin System school, the UW System president and two Board of Regents leaders expressed support for the state budget’s funding and flexibility for the system Monday.
The officials said the 2013-2015 biennial budget would provide the lowest tuition increase in a decade, performance-based funding and startup investments for the UW Flexible Option, while also addressing compensation needs at each institution and facility endowments, according to a UW System statement.
Aside from keeping tuition down, the budget would fuel high-skill job creation, train the workforce to fill those jobs and spawn economic activity, the statement said. It also said the combination of flexibility and funding is “essential” to the system’s prosperity in serving students and citizens.
UW System spokesperson Dave Giroux said he hopes the message will result in legislators appreciating the importance of reinvesting in higher education and help them realize all UW chancellors feel the same way.
“The biggest priority for us is to make sure that the proposed reinvestment that [Gov. Scott] Walker has offered gets passed by the Legislature,” Giroux said.
Giroux said his second hope is for people to realize most of the reinvestment for which the letter’s signers are asking is funding for ongoing fixed costs and less for new programs and initiatives. He said current programs would be cut if those costs cannot be covered.
According to the budget, $28 million, or 16 percent, of the proposed $181 million in UW System funding would go toward new initiatives.
Giroux said the process to gain approval from the UW System university chancellors and two-year college deans was quick and simple, as they agreed they would support such a message in favor of the budget’s UW System provisions only about 10 minutes after completing their budget analysis.
Board of Regents President Brent Smith and Vice President Michael Falbo signed onto the endorsement soon afterward, Giroux said.
While Giroux said the tuition increase for Wisconsin residents attending system schools would not exceed 5.5 percent, he acknowledged this percentage remains uncertain. That is because the exact amount of funding the system will receive is still in flux, Giroux added.
According to Mike Mikalsen, spokesperson for Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, statements such as this one by the UW System are an attempt to block tuition caps because they do not cite any specific tuition increase percentages.
“They’re going to pledge that they’re going to keep tuition low, but eventually, as President Reilly has stated, he wants a significant pay bump for UW System faculty,” Mikalsen said. “That will require tuition increases and to what level, we don’t know.”
Giroux said the signees of the system’s statement do not advocate for such a tuition increase cap, but instead they do want a modest tuition increase.
He added UW System cut a quarter-million dollars from the current biennium to adjust to increasing higher education costs without placing the burden on students through steep tuition hikes. According to Giroux, UW System is already one of the most efficient systems of higher education in the country, and administrative overhead is approximately half the national average.
“We’ve cut costs, and we’ve done so in a way we hope still preserves the quality of the UW System,” Giroux said. “But at some point, we need to reinvest in the capacity to serve students. That investment has to come from the state.”
