KIMBERLY WETHAL
Republicans on the Legislature’s budget committee may deal the Universities of Wisconsin the system’s biggest cut in nearly a decade, to the tune of $87 million.
The cut was first reported by Civic Media on Monday night. By contrast, the UW system had requested an increase in state aid of $856 million. The committee had been slated to take up the UW system’s budget on Tuesday but punted it for unspecified reasons.
Budget committee co-chairs Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, did not confirm the proposed cut to the UW system to reporters ahead of the budget committee’s meeting Tuesday, saying only that they had decided not to take up the universities’ budget.
Assembly Speaker Rep. Robin Vos, R-Rochester, confirmed Wednesday that Republicans were looking at a cut of that size because, he said, the UW system had not done enough to ensure conservative students feel like they belong on campus.
Vos also said he believed too much "political correctness" remained on campuses and alluded to the pro-Palestinian protests that have taken place in the last two years.
"It's not about cutting money. What it is is about getting some kind of reforms to the broken process that we currently have," Vos said. "We don't have enough respect for political diversity. Heaven forbid if you're a student who's Jewish or has a different viewpoint on campus where you feel like you're either targeted or the victim of potential hate. So we want to ensure that whatever happens on campus, it is a free exchange of ideas and that people understand that's the basis for what the university should be."
Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, told reporters following the committee meeting Tuesday that a $87 million cut to the UW system is a “non-starter.”
“The university, over the last generation, has seen their budget shrink and shrink. They have not gotten inflationary increases, and they’ve had cuts,” Roys said.
“What they had asked for in this budget session would help make them whole from the cuts that they have endured over the last 15 years. And it’s even more important at a time when we’re looking at potentially very significant cuts in federal dollars going to education.”
Further cuts to the UW system would be “devastating” after years of neglect, UW system spokesperson Mark Pitsch said.
“It’s astounding that reductions would be a consideration, when the Legislature knows what is at stake for our communities, our workforce, and our ability to develop the talent that Wisconsin counts on for its economic vibrancy,” Pitsch said. “We should be investing in education and developing talent, not cutting it.”
It’s unknown when the budget committee will take up the UW system’s budget, but it would need to happen next week for any budget to reach Gov. Tony Evers’ desk by the end of the fiscal year on June 30. Discussions on spending levels for multiple other agencies, including the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the Higher Education Aids Board, also have been pushed back.
The UW system has either seen slight or no increases in state aid, outside of pay plan increases for staff that apply to all state employees, for more than a decade. In 2009 and 2015, the UW system took $250 million in cuts under governors from both parties. The largest increase the UW system has received in the last decade was in 2021, when Republicans added $49 million to its operating budget.
In the last budget, state aid for the UW system remained flat, but system administrators were required to come up with a workforce development plan in order to tap $32 million that was held back. The amount represented what top Republicans estimated the UW system spent on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The UW system has made free speech a heavy emphasis since President Jay Rothman arrived in 2022. Under his leadership, the UW system moved forward with a controversial free speech survey that led to the resignation of an interim chancellor; UW system leaders regularly tout their civil dialogue programming at UW Board of Regents meetings.
Focus on DEI
Earlier this year, a Legislative Audit Bureau report showed the UW system spent $40 million on diversity, equity and inclusion over the 2023-24 school year.
UW system leaders decried those numbers as “old and cold.” Leaders added the report wasn’t reflective of the work they’d done to reassign diversity staff elsewhere and included spending that had nothing to do with diversity efforts, such as paying health insurance premiums for international students and mental health counseling.
For years, Wisconsin has ranked in the bottom 20% for state investment per full-time student in its public four-year universities, while the state’s two-year public technical colleges rank in the top 20%, thanks to tech colleges’ ability to levy property taxes in their districts. The ongoing gap is a talking point the UW system leaders have used for years to lobby for more state funding.
The UW system also faces financial pressures from the federal government, as multiple agencies have proposed reductions in what they will reimburse for so-called indirect costs of research and canceled contracts and grants deemed to be out of line with President Donald Trump’s priorities.
Other voices
Business leaders and employers across the state increasingly have come out in support of providing the UW system more funding.
Last month, hundreds of businesses and chambers around the state, including Epic Systems and Exact Sciences, signed a letter urging lawmakers to boost state aid; during the last budget cycle, businesses put pressure on legislators as UW-Madison’s engineering building wasn’t initially given funding.
The UW system had a bit of a warning it wasn’t going to get anywhere close to the amount of funding administrators requested.
Last week, Born and Marklein hinted that the $229 million increase they were proposing to bolster special education funding would be the largest increase of any state agency in this budget.
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