The UW System released reports from each campus Monday that detailed the effects of state funding cuts to public higher education within the last year.
UW System President Ray Cross asked last week for each chancellor to compile a one-page summary of how the cuts impacted their school, a document he said in an email should be “factual, not whiny.”
The chancellors were originally given five minutes to present their findings to the Board of Regents during the body’s latest meeting last Friday. However, the presentations were eliminated from the agenda due to time constraints and in order to focus more on sharing those results within the community, according to UW System spokesperson Alex Hummel.
The reports, which are currently available for public viewing, demonstrated reductions in faculty and staff positions, lack of funding for facilities and maintenance and decreased resources for students systemwide.
Several schools cited fiscal risks due to dwindling reserves, including UW-Eau Claire and UW-Superior, which are currently faced with zero reserves, and UW-Madison, which is left with an amount that would allow the university to operate for less than a week.
The reports also described reduced funding for technology resources at many of the institutions. UW-La Crosse’s Murphy Library was forced to discontinue several of its services during the 2015-’16 school year according to its report, and funding electronic databases, acquisitions and other learning materials for students will be “challenging.”
Recruitment and retention of faculty and staff also suffered at schools throughout the system, according to the reports. UW-Platteville faced a 10 percent reduction in employees and UW-Stevens Point saw a decrease in competitive salary rates, as 94.7 percent of its faculty members are now paid less than the national average. UW-Stout has exhausted nearly all funds used to match offers from competing peer institutions.
Other effects vary in type but are present across the board, such as the elimination of UW-Oshkosh’s men’s soccer team and 42 fewer courses at UW-Whitewater being offered in Fall 2015 than Fall 2014.
Hummel said in the next several months regents will be meeting with chancellors and community leaders to assess the impacts in greater detail.
Meanwhile, state politicians have called for legislative hearings to be held on the subject, arguing there needs to be public discussion on how universities have been forced to cope with the cuts.
State Reps. Terese Berceau, D-Madison, and Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, sent a letter to Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities Chair David Murphy, R-Greenfield, last Thursday asking that committee to hold a public hearing where the chancellors could present their respective budget documents.
“The $250 million cut was among the most high-profile and contentious issues to arise in consideration of last year’s budget,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter. “The Board of Regents meeting would have been an ideal forum for the Wisconsin taxpayer to hear from campus leaders as a group about the actual effects of those cuts. The Regents have foreclosed this opportunity, and only legislative oversight exercised by Committee members can provide a similarly accessible and transparent venue …”
But Murphy rebuffed the request in a response Friday afternoon, arguing the matter was not within his committee’s jurisdiction.
“The UW Board of Regents is the appropriate place to hold this dialogue,” Murphy said in the response. “I don’t want to circumvent the processes that the UW has in place for meetings and addressing the concerns.”
But legislative Democrats are persisting. State Sens. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, and Janet Bewley, D-Ashland, the two Democrats on the Senate universities committee, published a letter Monday requesting a hearing in that body.
The office of that committee’s chair, state Sen. Shelia Harsdorf, R-River Falls, could not immediately respond regarding whether a hearing would be held.
