When students look down State Street to the Capitol building, many may say they see a monopoly of power for University of Wisconsin policies, tuition setting and budgeteering. Many students do not know that much of the power held in planning the UW System’s future rests in the top floors of Van Hise, where they will find the Board of Regents’ offices and where meetings are often held.

The UW System Board of Regents is a 17-member collection of individuals appointed by the governor of Wisconsin to look out for the interests of every UW campus, including the state’s technical college system, two-year and four-year universities.

“There may not be a more critical citizen appointment to this state than to the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents,” said spokesperson for the UW System Doug Bradley. “We try to find people that are passionate about higher education.”

Bradley pointed out the UW System employs more than 30,000 people and enrolls more than 160,000 students at any given time. Beth Richlen, a UW law student and the only student on the board, said the regents must also take into account a given university’s community and the rights and citizens of the state.

“I’ve rarely been in a state [in which] a public university does not have an impact on everyday life … we have to balance the needs of faculty, students, parents and politicians,” Bradley said, adding most teachers, doctors, nurses and pharmacists in the state all attended a UW System school, along with business leaders, manufacturing workers and civil-service professionals.

The responsibility of issuing an educational agenda, budgeting money for degree programs and setting tuition rates also lies in the hands of the regents. Richlen said dealing with the budget for different programs is one of the most important and time-consuming tasks on the Board of Regents.

Richlen clarified, however, that the regents do not micromanage budgets for each university, but rather designate how much money is necessary to make any certain program — such as political science — operational throughout the whole system.

Richlen also said the regents strive to make “efficiencies” within degree-granting programs.

“We want to have the time to earn a degree as quickly as possible [and] as efficiently as possible,” Richlen said, adding she personally disapproves of programs and industries adding extra requirements for a certain degree or job.

Because the regents strive to create efficiencies in the academic world, Richlen said the board rewards innovation. However, she said the fact that the regents “don’t feel the university is as innovative as it once was” could be tied to the slim budgets the governor has handed down to the university due to deficits in state revenues.

“You can’t spend money on being innovative when you’re spending money on bare essentials,” Richlen said, adding the board is forced to reward new policies only after the school has brought them up. But she added the biggest financial issue for her in the spring semester’s proceedings will be increasing the availability and quantity of financial aid.

The board, while protecting the UW System’s interests, realizes it must also, on occasion, act politically. When Gov. Jim Doyle handed down a budget cutting $250 million from the UW System, the Board of Regents said it had no choice but to freeze enrollment in order to show the necessity of state funds to the higher education system.

“Freezing enrollment was playing politics,” Richlen readily admitted.

The board also scheduled some late-night meetings to raise university executive salaries, which Richlen said will “pay for itself over time.”

Richlen said it is important to make allies and speak with leaders at the Capitol, adding politics on the Board of Regents itself also come into play to push personal-agenda issues.

Though budget meetings dominate much of the regents’ time, Richlen said the board decides requirements for any new programs entering the university curriculum. She added the board also pushes through any structural campus improvements they deem important. Aside from construction issues, Richlen also stressed the importance of diversity initiatives and making campuses accountable for commitments to Plan 2008.

For all the work and visits with students and leaders Richlen said she and the other unpaid regents do, the board gets a lot of undue criticism.

“It’s thankless in a lot of ways,” Richlen said. “[If the governor] gives us a sh-tty education system … that’s not our job to provide the budget … we try to make it the best possible system.”

Richlen said she wished students would not complain exclusively to the regents, but take their comments to the Capitol, where budget planning is also done.

“For citizens to be effective, they can’t just grind their axe with one group,” Bradley said.