UW System leaders spoke against additional system-wide funding cuts at a Senate committee meeting Tuesday.
The one-time cuts, meant to address lapses in the current state budget, will increase existing gaps in higher education funding by an additional $65.8 million over the next two years, cutting $18 million from UW-Madison alone.
Testifying before the Senate Committee on Higher Education, UW System President Kevin P. Reilly said additional cuts hinder the UW System’s contribution to state economic growth.
“If we seem taken aback, and we do, by the new proposed budget lapses, it’s primarily because they jeopardize [UW’s] public mission and threaten our ability to sustain broad access to high-quality education,” Reilly said.
Additionally, Reilly said “the lapses hit the university in a highly disproportionate, inequitable way” because the UW System, which uses 7 percent of the state’s general-purpose revenue, is taking 38 percent of budget lapse cuts.
Chancellors, professors and student leaders from across the UW System echoed Reilly’s concerns in testimony before the committee, worrying about the impact cuts could have on class size, faculty layoffs and affordability.
“These budget lapses point out the need for a broad policy discussion on the bounds between [general-purpose revenue] and tuition that helps to fund the university,” Chancellor David Ward told the committee. “We need, as a state, to decide and declare what the appropriate balance of tuition and state funding should be.”
Ward noted UW System leaders must learn to be cost-effective as well.
UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Michael Lovell contended, there is “only so far” increased efficiency can go toward covering the cuts.
“There’s really a limit to how far we can be cut,” Lovell said. “I believe the present cuts to the UW System could do irreparable harm to the state.”
Committee Chairman state Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, said he hoped the group could serve as a “conduit” to remind fellow senators to “make certain that we understand the consequence of our action when it comes to the apportionment of the state finances.”
“We will get together on a bipartisan basis and chat about where we go from here,” Schultz said.
