A botched field goal and a muffed punt were enough to keep the Badgers a step behind Michigan’s football squad this fall, and though Bo Ryan’s hoopsters have shown signs of improvement, they remain at least a tier below the Cavaliers of Virginia.

While the reasons are perhaps more complex, UW-Madison may also be trailing its peer universities in the realm of academia.

In a study released by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute last year, the non-partisan public interest think tank made comparisons between UW and other top universities and gave other evidence to suggest UW may find more success as an independent institution.

“Chartering the University of Wisconsin-Madison,” the report by James Miller and Dr. Frank Cipriani, advocates separating UW from the system of state schools, which lumps UW with two-year and four-year state colleges like UW-Eau Claire and UW-Milwaukee.

The study argues that UW is constantly in the spotlight for academic achievement, but is held back by being funded largely by the biennial state budget, which also provides funds for the smaller state campuses, none of which have comparable graduate programs or research facilities.

“UW-Madison is on the front pages of the national newspapers because its faculty members are the leaders in the world on stem cell research,” the study says. “[UW-Madison] also leads in a number of other biotech and scientific areas.

The University is poised to lead the state into the twenty-first century with new knowledge that can be exploited for the state’s economic benefit. The big question mark is whether it can fulfill this role when it is as constrained as it is by the rules and regulations that currently govern its operation.”

Miller cited the need for a fresh look at how UW is administered as motivation for undertaking the report.

“[WPRI does] research on a lot of issues in Wisconsin, and we have noticed that a lot of institutions in Wisconsin have changed radically recently–K-12 education in Milwaukee, state corrections, tax policy–we’ve seen changes just about everywhere except UW-Madison,” Miller said.

The current situation

UW-Madison currently carries a budget of over $1.5 billion. Of that total, 25 percent is received directly from the state.

Due in part to the events of and following Sept. 11, state tax revenue has fallen short of projected levels and the state now faces a budget deficit of $1.1 billion.

As a result, UW System is being asked under a recent proposal by Gov. Scott McCallum to take a $51 million cut in funding over the next year. Funding for UW comprises 46 percent of the total system budget.

Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, said he feels higher education budget cuts are fair game.

“I don’t think the quality of the university will be hurt by the budget proposal,” Suder said. “There is a lot of fat in the budget that we need to take a second look at. Everyone has to share in this pain.”

Chancellor John Wiley, when projecting to The Badger Herald areas of possible cuts, said administrative offices and libraries are unlikely to bear any funding loss and that cuts will be directed toward other areas.

“We’re the lowest among all of our peers in total administrative costs at about three percent. Most organizations and business are up at 10 percent and above,” Wiley said.

“There’s not a lot of fat. Now, there may be individuals [who may be viewed as inefficient], but that person would probably have to be replaced by someone else in the same job.”

In light of the current budget situation and the conflict surrounding it, alternative sources for coping with the loss of revenue are being explored which could relieve the biennial wrangling over funding levels. Proponents of the charter not only believe such a step would bypass many budget issues, but could also improve the academic quality of UW as a whole.

Currently, UW-Madison is the top university in Wisconsin, according to U.S. News & World Report, which ranks it 32 among all American universities and eighth among public universities. UW-Milwaukee, the closest competitor in the UW System, is ranked in the 130s.

The Michigan example

The University of Michigan is not only close to the UW in terms of size and geography; it is also perhaps the best example of a large, public and chartered university.

Associate Vice President of University Budgeting at Michigan, Marilyn Knepp, said the university has a history of independence.

“The original charter for the university doesn’t speak at all to our funding or our relationship with our state–it simply says the state should provide funding for a university,” Knepp said.

“We actually existed before the state existed. We are governed by the University Board of Regents; the state’s obligation is to financially support the institution. There have been a number of rewrites to the state constitution, but in all of them the autonomy of the institution has been reaffirmed.”

The University of Michigan is allocated a significant amount of state money, but that money is not earmarked as specifically as funds for UW are.

“We draw off of four primary revenue sources: state appropriation [the general fund], research, tuition, and interest,” Knepp said.

“Our general fund is the major source of unrestricted revenues that covers instruction. $360 million on a general fund of about a billion dollars sets the foundation for all we do. We are a line in the state budget. We get a lump sum.”

However, while allowed certain freedoms such as the ability to set its own tuition, Michigan is not free from state oversight.

“The state appropriations bills contain a lot of language about intent,” Knepp said. “They can earmark certain funding–if they want to, they can give us more for a given program. Each school decides how to spend what they get. [The legislature] makes their wishes known; they make it quite plain what they expect and what we need to be doing–there is an understanding. We do not operate in a vacuum.”

Looking forward: a reasonable possibility?

Regardless of the viability of the argument in favor of such a massive overhaul in Wisconsin higher education, the immediate future appears too cloudy to predict any drastic action.

While Chancellor Wiley said charter status works well for Virginia and Michigan, even saying it could work in Wisconsin, he said UW is too firmly rooted in the UW System to make the switch.

“I read the WPRI report when it first came out, and I think that frankly it’s about 30 years too late,” Wiley said. “Many of the things they listed as the benefits of being a charter school might have been true about the time of the formation of the System. But time has passed and the benefits are no longer true. We’ve got many of the flexibilities they said we should have–they just didn’t know that. I don’t know how you do a sensible report about an organization when you don’t know anything about the organization itself.”

UW Board of Regents member Roger Axtell made a slightly different assessment of the situation.

“I was very pleased about all the positive things [the WPRI] said about Madison,” Axtell said. “On the other hand, I thought the information coming out of the report did not explain where the money would come from should such a change occur.”

Neither the board, the university, nor the state legislature are planning any changes to UW’s status. Resolving the current budget situation has brought possible long-term solutions such as a charter into the debate, but has also pushed them aside in favor of short-term fixes for the budget crunch.

“There are more questions than answers at this point,” Axtell said.