Using our impeccable foresight, those of us on The Badger Herald Editorial Board deemed the following state and local stories important to watch over the course of this semester.
Transfer season for athletes … and professors?
As recruiting season for academic institutions enters full force, time will tell how much University of Wisconsin’s changes to shared governance and tenure will cost the university.
Controversial tenure provisions become reality as Gov. Walker signs budget
In light of recent budget cuts and changes to UW’s shared governance and tenure policies, retaining and recruiting new talent to the university has gotten more difficult. While both are crucial to UW and the state, it’s important that faculty retainment doesn’t come at the expense of other campus issues and programs.
Already at UW, programs and classes are on the chopping block. The College of Letters and Science will drop approximately 320 courses across departments prior to the end of the 2017 fiscal year. Notably and most recently, UW’s sheep research program announced it is ending in response to department budget cuts.
The university has pledged $3 million in efforts to retain faculty. UW faces a high cost — it will either lose key members of its faculty, or have to offer more compelling packages to keep them here. This is without considering the potential of further cuts to programs, departments and classes.
While UW hasn’t said yet how many faculty have been contacted and recruited by other universities, the College of Letters and Sciences had received 42 retention cases as of December 2015, up from its average of 30.
The reality is that the changes over the summer to shared governance and tenure, and UW’s subsequent loss of faculty will be much more costly than the budget cuts.
Red state, blue state, purple state
Ladies and gentleman, 2016 is upon us. It may seem like it’s been election season for, well, ever, but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter. But which direction our politically fickle, sometimes downright contradictory, state will go still remains uncertain.
Despite Republicans typically referring to Wisconsin as a “blue state,” this could be the year that finally turns Wisconsin into a full-fledged swing state after years of being borderline.
After all, Wisconsin is the state that went blue for President Barack Obama in the two most recent presidential elections, just to turn around and elect Republican darling and former presidential hopeful Gov. Scott Walker three times in four years. Additionally, staunch liberal U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, and Tea Partier U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, are two of the most ideologically opposite politicians in Congress.
Wisconsin was also one of a handful of states selected to host both Republican and Democratic debates this election season. With both the presidency and a Wisconsin Senate seat up for grabs in November, 2016 could shed at least a bit more light on Wisconsin’s political identity crisis.
Shape-shifting tenure policy
Faculty tenure has always been something inseparable from higher education. Allowing faculty to pursue research, no matter how politically or publicly unpopular, is crucial in pushing the boundaries of education. The UW System Board of Regents will decide by the end of March just how devoted it is to that idea.
When Gov. Scott Walker proposed and the Legislature codified changes to tenure policy in the UW System, higher education watch groups were rightfully concerned. Despite claims by UW System President Ray Cross and UW Chancellor Rebecca Blank to the contrary, it was easy to see tenure being yet another casualty of Walker’s relentless assault on education.
Faculty Senate approves tenure policy, voices concern over graduate assistant compensation
But the actions taken across campus since then have been encouraging. The Faculty Senate recently approved a redesigned tenure policy for UW with support from Blank. This proposal will go to the Board of Regents for review by a subcommittee in February and then the full Board in March.
While tenure may unfairly protect some extremely low quality professors as Republicans asserted in defense of removing it from state statutes, it protects the research and academic freedom of many more. The stakes for UW and the system at large will be high when the board meets in March.
Dane County tackles mental health
Dane County’s 2016 budget demonstrates a commitment to lowering inequities, in the realms of incarceration, racial disparities and another issue that has long plagued the county’s population: access to mental health services.
Under its budget, the county will be expanding mental health programming to increase access to services in schools, providing greater assistance to law enforcement and addressing recommendations from a Dane County Jail study highlighting racial disparities and mental health.
County committee passes budget amendments with focus on disparity
Dane County’s mental health system, as it stands, leaves a lot to be desired. On their website, National Alliance on Mental Health Dane County described the county’s mental health system as “fragmented and often confusing.” In reality, they are multiple systems working simultaneously; the private-care system, the public system and nonprofit groups.
While these systems do overlap in some areas, oftentimes they leave gaps in coverage.
As Dane County Executive Joe Parisi said in Channel3000’s “For the Record” in December, mental health services, while available to members of the county, are difficult to connect to. This is especially true, Parisi said, if an individual doesn’t have access to insurance through work, BadgerCare or the Affordable Care Act, which is a reality faced by those unable to afford the private system.
But, Parisi said, in part through the 2016 budget, the county is trying to help people connect to these available services via a “one-stop-shop model,” which will, among other things, incentivize providers to get into the county’s health care system.
“Theoretically,” Parisi said, “no one should be without coverage.”
Much ado about nothing
It sounds benign on the surface — making Wisconsin public sector jobs just like every other job in the state: based on performance.
A bill proposed in September by Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, and Sen. Roger Roth, R-Appleton, would phase out the state’s civil service exam used to make hiring decisions. The bill that has stalled out in the state Senate also makes layoff decisions based on job performance rather than seniority, making firing state employees a lot easier.
Advocates of the bill are citing past issues as a way to push the bill forward to a vote. Some of the instances would not have even been affected had this legislation been in place, making it irrelevant.
One of the incidents cited as a reason this legislation is necessary is a situation when someone scored so well on a civil service exam for a financial examiner job that the state had to grant him an interview. The reason this is bad, according to state Republicans, is because those in charge of hiring had deemed the applicant under-qualified.
Could it be that the test needs to be changed instead of a bill that would overhaul the state employment system?
At the very best, this legislation is much ado about nothing, which is rather benign for a state government that has time and time again hurt our state instead of helping it.
