Gov. Scott Walker is now calling for the Legislature to freeze tuition for a two-year period at all system schools after legislators discovered millions of dollars in University of Wisconsin System reserve funds. 

Contrary to Walker’s proposal for a tuition freeze, UW System President Kevin Reilly asked last week for a 2 percent increase in tuition in the next two years, after larger tuition increases that have occurred since 2007.

State legislators and students expressed anger toward the 2 percent tuition increase after an independent memo from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau revealed the system holds $648 million in its cash reserves.

Tom Evenson, a spokesperson for Walker, said the UW System has raised tuition by 5.5 percent every year since 2007, and a tuition freeze is necessary to give middle-class families help in paying the cost of higher education.

High tuition is often necessary to have a great public university, Clifton Conrad, UW professor of higher education, said.  

“Part of the cost is that we want a great university, and that means the tuition will be a little bit higher,” Conrad said. “There are going to be some tradeoffs.”

Mike Mikalsen, spokesperson for Rep. Stephen Nass, R-Whitewater, said tuition increase proposals are out of line for Reilly and UW System because of the current economic climate.

Mikalsen said Nass, who also serves as chair of the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities, proposed a four-year tuition freeze and is hoping Walker will increase his initiative from two to four years as well. He added, however, that Nass is generally satisfied with Walker’s proposal.

“[A tuition freeze] sends a message to people that we get it, the elected officials finally get that middle-class families are overstressed,” Mikalsen said. 

In addition to his proposal for a four-year tuition freeze, Nass has called for Reilly to resign or be fired as president of the UW System. 

Mikalsen said Reilly and his fellow administrators made the sole decision to create a “slush fund,” without approval from the Board of Regents, the governing body for the UW System.

“[Reilly and administrators] clearly raised tuition much higher than they needed to for the sole purpose of jacking up and raising the surplus,” Mikalsen said. 

Mikalsen added the reserve funds are “not allocated to anything,” and were only created by Reilly and his administrators to have a surplus.

Conrad said reserve funds are necessary, and in fact, most universities have reserve funds. Conrad added he is more upset about the issue of reserve funds flowing into the public domain.

“Instead of politicizing this, [Walker and legislators] should have this debate with [Reilly],” Conrad said. “[Reilly] needs to talk to the governor in a rational way about what kind of university you want, and how you’re going to pay for it.”

Conrad said a consequence of cutting costs to a university is losing great, recently-hired faculty if pay raises do not come soon.

Mikalsen said the competition between universities is not a solid reason to increase tuition.

He also added the UW System will not be greatly affected by cutting its costs.

“If you lower tuition, you’re not going to be cutting a ton of classes or closing down campuses,” Mikalsen said. “The desire to escalate tuition just because other campuses are increasing tuition will be proven a fallacy.”

Mikalsen said the creation of reserve funds by Reilly and administrators is a “betrayal of public trust,” and cited leadership as a source of problems for the UW System.