Scott Walker’s School Days: Wisconsin’s Governor Takes on Higher-ed Costs. Faculty Horror Ensues.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/scott-walkers-school-days-1424646041
Colleges are usually at the forefront of radical politics, but when it comes to their own privileges they become feudal empires. Behold the revolt in the Wisconsin state university system over Governor Scott Walker ’s appeal for modest accountability.
In Mr. Walker’s recent biennial budget proposal, he joined the national debate on higher education. The Governor and potential presidential candidate wants to extend a 2013-2015 tuition freeze at the University of Wisconsin for two more years, and then slightly reduce state aid in exchange for more independence for the system.
UW is now a formal state agency, which operates under the same regulations that apply to the rest of the bureaucracy on worker compensation, bonding for building projects, procurement, contracting and much else. Mr. Walker would spin off UW as a quasi-public authority that is out of this government saddle. He would also convert state aid that is now filled with earmarks for specific programs into a clean, inflation-adjusted block grant that UW could spend at its discretion.
The UW system has sought such academic freedom from the state for a generation, though apparently Mr. Walker still isn’t sufficiently reverential. UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank and other administrators are lobbying the legislature to reject the block grant because it is about $300 million less than UW’s two-year budget base. They’re also organizing protests among faculty, students and other activists, some of whom showed up last week at Mr. Walker’s home.
The demonstrators even object to Mr. Walker’s suggestion that UW’s “Wisconsin idea” mission include a goal “to develop human resources to meet the state’s workforce needs.” This is supposedly anti-intellectual, though perhaps authority figures should tell the kids majoring in social justice to prepare for the jobs they’ll need in the real world.
Their real grievance is Mr. Walker’s belief that higher-ed spending shouldn’t climb year after year and get passed off to taxpayers and students with ever-higher debt. The entitled academics pretend that universities are chamber orchestras that can’t improve productivity. But you can tell a college administrator is dissembling when he claims there is no fat left to trim, especially in as large an organization as UW.
Mr. Walker’s $150 million one-year “cut” will be absorbed into a $6.098 billion system-wide operating budget for 2014-15. It amounts to a 12.7% reduction in state aid, but that is merely 2.5% of UW’s overall budget, most of which comes from other sources to support two full-service doctoral campuses, 11 four-year colleges, 13 two-year schools and an extension with offices in every county.
According to the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, UW also employs 15,100 full-time equivalent employees—42% of its workforce—who are called “academic staff.” The bureau defines them as “professional and administrative personnel other than faculty whose duties are primarily associated with higher education institutions or their administration,” and UW has one of them on payroll for every 10 enrolled student-equivalents. Some 59% work at the UW-Madison campus.
Mr. Walker is instead asking UW to set priorities, while providing the tools and flexibility to live within a budget. He wants to avoid what happened during the last state budget squeeze, under Democratic Governor Jim Doyle, when the state simply raised tuition by 18% on average in 2003-04, and again by 15% in 2004-05.
Thanks to the current tuition freeze for in-state undergraduates—the first in Wisconsin history—UW-Madison’s sticker price of $10,410 is below the Big Ten school average of $11,819. In an angry speech to the board of regents this month, Chancellor Blank seemed to view this lower cost as a problem.
She said that if the freeze continues UW will fall to last among its regional peers. “We’re going to have to get further up toward the median in part to fill some of these budget holes and in part to reflect our market quality. I shouldn’t be the cheapest school in the Big Ten,” she said. Attention, freshmen: She used to be an economic adviser to President Obama in the Commerce Department.
Ms. Blank added, or threatened, that “outside of state funding, the only thing you’re left with is tuition, that’s the one thing that you can increase fast when your state dollars go down fast.” Or she could place a call to the few college president reformers who are trying to modernize their institutions to make degrees cheaper but also more valuable.
***
Mitch Daniels is a good role model, having cut the cost of attending Purdue for two straight years since he became president in 2013. The former Indiana Governor’s search for efficiencies is legendary, including the dining hall and used furniture, and student debt among Boilermakers has fallen 18% in his tenure. Another is Dartmouth’s Phil Hanlon, who requires college departments to cut 1.5% of spending each year and spend it on something new. This annual reallocation clears out deadwood while encouraging innovation.
Mr. Walker has already infuriated the professoriate by proposing offhand that they cut costs by taking on an extra courseload a semester. If UW refuses to find this or other savings, he should next try to abolish tenure.
Comments are closed.
