If John Bascom strolled through his namesake today, he would be pleased to find a university whose state focus turned global, and whose Wisconsin Idea became a worldwide one.
The Wisconsin Idea, inspired by Bascom, coined by Frederick Jackson Turner and championed by Charles Van Hise and Bob La Follette, gained traction in the early 20th century. Over the past century, however, globalization took Bascom’s desire—often paraphrased as “the boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state"—to the next level.
Global health centers, leading science research, 20 Nobel Prizes and 38 Pulitzer Prizes, over 1,000 CEOs, the second-largest producer of Peace Corps volunteers; the UW System is no longer solely a state-influencing institution.
The 2011-’12 school year marked the Year of the Wisconsin Idea, a time to reflect on the university’s mission. At the time, Gwen Drury, a Ph.D. student in educational policy and leadership analysis at UW-Madison, reflected on the history of the vision and how the statewide approach reached beyond in an essay entitled “The Wisconsin Idea: The Vision that Made Wisconsin Famous.”
It began in 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln signed The Morrill Land Grant Act, aiming to increase national infrastructures in an ever-growing country by incentivizing differently than other states, expanding its existing university instead of creating new schools within the state.
Though it seems a stroke of genius looking at Wisconsin’s universities today, Drury writes it came about out of frugality.
That unique approach strengthened a singular UW System that physically reached the state’s corners and soon spread outside as well.
As the world modernized, education followed.
Today, a college degree is not bound to a single campus. With online options and expat opportunities, a career could lead a graduate anywhere on the globe.
Last year, UW-Madison ranked first in public university study abroad participants, with 1,082 Badgers spreading The Wisconsin Idea across the world in the 2014-’15 academic year. It also ranked highly in international students, welcoming 6,440 in the 2015-’16 year.
A modern picture of The Wisconsin Idea in action is students who take advantage of their school’s opportunities as well as extracurriculars.
One such student is Jenny Ostrowski, a UW-Madison student studying international relations and African languages and literature, who recently spoke at the UW Language Institute’s World Language Day event. She took a gap-year in Germany, an Ecuadorian service trip and a refugee volunteer mission in Greece.
Her broad-based learning experience—which combined German classes in Superior, Wis., community immersion in Latin America and Arabic classes at UW-Madison—extended the boundaries of her education well beyond the state.
Though it was drawn up in a time when the Model T was on the market, The Wisconsin Idea has changed its look and efficiency over the years has changed much like cars have. Today, Badgers are citizens of the world.
