With the end of another academic year, this board must reiterate
the importance of the quality of higher education. We find
‘striking’ parallels between the administration’s handling of the
recent TAA walk-out and the state’s now long-standing disregard for
the importance of public higher education in its own economic
future.

Last year, the state legislature passed a biennial budget
cutting the University of Wisconsin System by $250 million, the
deepest in the system’s history. That cut, combined with those
accrued for the 10 years prior, essentially forced the Regents’
hands on tuition. As a result, students saw their tuition bills
increase by considerable margins, at least $700 per year for
in-state students at UW.

Fewer and fewer residents of Wisconsin can now afford its
leading University. According to Chancellor Wiley, the median
income for a Wisconsin family is $45,000. Yet the average family
income of this year’s class is almost twice that number. Is this
the state legislature’s notion of the Wisconsin Idea?

Moreover, the budget situation forced administrators at system
universities to cut classes, increase class sizes and set aside
money to deal with future cuts.

That last tactic — the deliberate creation of reserves so as to
counter future cuts — we find both prudent and alarming. Prudent,
because UW administrators can expect more cuts and must take action
to soften what are sure to be damaging blows. Alarming, because the
state legislators responsible for making those cuts completely
disregard the economic importance of the system to Wisconsin. In
the last biennial budget, the UW system received 38 percent of the
cuts to state spending. Yet the UW System only constitutes 9
percent of the overall budget while representing one of the best
investments taxpayers can make. It seems state legislators have it
in for the UW System — and for the future of the state.

Yet, given recent events regarding the TAA strike, we wonder if
the current UW administration also fails to see the forest from the
trees. The University, under pressure from the TAA, offered
$300,000 from its own reserves — the same reserves meant to deal
with future cuts — to sweeten the state’s contract offer. However,
that money was never meant to help a state agency alleviate its own
labor dispute.

Though the University has since retracted this offer, it seems
the damage is done. The state legislature, already seething at any
opportunity to cut the UW System for its own misguided reasons, now
has a seemingly legitimate reason for doing so. If the UW
administration complains it does not have the money to deal with
future cuts, members of the state legislature will argue that
Bascom was willing to spend an extra $300,000 to bail out the TAA.
This could cause the legislature to seek even deeper cuts to the
system during the next biennial budget.

In the end, the administration should have realized this dispute
was not its problem, but the problem of the Office of State
Employment Relations. The administration perceived this as its
problem because of an illegal action pursued by members of the TAA.
By even slightly giving in to that pressure, the administration has
opened up its budget to more attacks by the state legislature.

This board certainly disapproves of the state legislature’s
treatment of the higher education system. It threatens the future
economic vitality of the state and the accessibility to public
higher education for Wisconsin residents. However, the
administration has likewise displayed a lack of forethought in
dealing with the TAA. By expressing a willingness to spend more
money on the labor dispute, it invites the state legislature to
continue its irresponsible gouging. We remind UW administrators
that the purse bearers at the other end of State Street hold the
value of a UW degree in low regard.