UW-Madison may not remain in the top 10 public universities in the country in the next five years if the state Assembly budget proposal goes into effect and private funding decreases, UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley said last week.
As the state Senate begins to discuss the biennial budget, the Senate Biennial Budget Committee held a public hearing March 26 at Memorial Union, where Wiley explained some ways the university would be significantly hurt by the additional cuts proposed by the Assembly.
The chancellor's statement came after several weeks of heightened concern by the UW System as to how it would deal with budget cuts initially proposed by Gov. Scott McCallum at $50 million, with the Assembly doubling that figure.
Two weeks after it had instituted a system-wide freeze on admissions, the UW System Board of Regents voted March 22 to end the freeze. The reasoning behind the freeze was that it would be irresponsible to admit more students with the pending budget situation, Board of Regents President Jay Smith said.
But at last week's hearing, Wiley echoed ideas that are becoming all too true for UW-Madison'it will indeed be hit hard by the proposed budget cuts.
Among some of the principal effects, Wiley said approximately 100 faculty positions the university had scheduled to hire in the 2002-'03 school year would be eliminated. An additional 50 would be eliminated if the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the UW Foundation decrease matching funds dependent on funding by the state.
UW-Madison Vice Chancellor for Administration John Torphy explained that on average, faculty members who do research on campus generate $250,000, leading to a $25 million loss in research grants because of the 100 eliminated hiring positions.
Wiley also said between 250 and 300 academic and classified staff, along with graduate assistants, would be eliminated.
Torphy said the university would try to deal with these losses by not filling vacant positions, for example.
\We will try to avoid layoffs to the maximum extent possible,"" he said.
But Wiley said some layoffs would be likely.
As a result of the decrease of faculty and staff, class sizes may increase for freshman and sophomores, he said.
Torphy said with these size of cuts it would inevitably affect education in the classroom.
""Where there's a discussion section of 20 there may be 23 or 24 or 25,"" he said. ""Where there's a lecture of 50, there may be 75.""
Wiley also outlined programs that would be minimized or cut completely, citing the Madison Initiative, which is designed to improve the overall education at UW-Madison. The program would suffer greatly because of its dependence on state funds that would no longer be available.
The Assembly's proposed budget would also lead to other special funding by the university being frozen, such as campus-based financial aid.
Torphy also criticized the Assembly's significant cut to printing advertising and travel costs, a great deal of which is not an option for the university, such as printing timetables, posting jobs and publicizing meetings.
""It's clear that there will be a budget cut, it's clear that it will be significant,"" he said. ""Our hope is we can go back to the governor's levels.""
Sen. Robert Jauch, D-Poplar, chair of the Biennial Budget Committee, said Wiley also criticized how the Assembly Republicans' proposed budget would damage the university.
""He very honestly debunked the myth that these cuts will not be harmful,"" he said.
Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, also on the committee, acknowledged how UW-Madison would be affected by these cuts, adding his personal concern as a parent of two daughters preparing to attend the university. He said it is still difficult, however, to criticize the Assembly Republican version of the budget.
""The Senate hasn't even seen the Democratic version of the budget, so it's kind of hard to talk about it when you have nothing to compare it to,"" Schultz said.
In response to criticism from ASM Chair Jessica Miller that the committee held its hearing over spring break, Jauch said the remark was misinformed and targeted at the wrong people. He added that the committee, the sole purpose of which is to facilitate these hearings, had to coordinate them at campuses across the state in a short time, making the hearing of at least one campus over break inevitable.
""If the governor had his way, we wouldn't have had them at all,"" he said.
