As UW-Milwaukee celebrates recognition as a top research university, it continues to suffer a “brain drain” much like UW-Madison in recent years.
When the school first opened its doors in 1956, it enrolled 6,000 students. 60 years later, it has more than 27,000 students.
In the 1960s, both Democrat and Republican legislators and administrators foresaw that UW-Milwaukee had the potential to be successful in research, noting the standardization of peer-reviewed research essential to the significance of the university.
Due to UW-Milwaukee’s growth in academic programs, it has become one of the top research schools in the nation. The university was announced as a top tier Research 1 institution by the Carnegie Foundation, which places them in the top two percent of all research universities.
However, the university has been met with a loss of faculty and decreasing enrollment for years. Since 2010, the physics department dropped from 26 to 19 faculty members, while the economics department suffered a 26 percent loss.
Most of the faculty that left went to universities also recognized for their research, including UCLA and Duke, signifying the university’s inability to keep up fiscally with other campuses.
“Young people who aspire to professional lives will go elsewhere for a brighter future for themselves, and they will make their contribution there instead of here. All parts of the community will be the losers, including the business community,” business writer John Torinus wrote.
Concerns have sprung about whether UW-Milwaukee will still be able to provide comprehensive teaching, research and community recognition.
“Can UWM and Milwaukee afford for UWM not to be?” responded former UW-Milwaukee Chancellor John Schroeder on WUWM.
However, money alone is not the cause of the faculty brain drain at UW-Milwaukee. Torinus cited how “poorly” the university was treated in comparison to UW-Madison.
Last spring, UW-Madison was granted $220 million in capital projects from the Board of Regents, which includes current $123 renovations to the chemistry building. Torinus shared his worries in Urban Milwaukee about the lack of equity in funds spread among the UW System, notably UW-Milwaukee.
“The Madison construction far exceeds Milwaukee’s best year in a long time. There is clearly a lack of anything resembling parity for the state’s two doctoral campuses,” he wrote.
And yet, it was recently found UW-Madison suffers losses of graduates leaving the state after receiving their diploma.
Nearly 75 percent of out-of-state UW-Madison graduates find jobs outside of Wisconsin. To boost state employment Gov. Walker revealed a $6.8 million investment plan that emphasized in-state retention and recruitment efforts.
For UW-Milwaukee, the concern does not lie in research excellence, nor the recognition, but in receiving the proper funding to maintain that presence in the state — as well as the nation — according to Schroeder.
“The challenges that the university faces today are probably as great as they faced in any other decade,” Schroeder said. “We have tremendous fiscal pressure placed on public universities in the state, in terms of tuition and public support.”
