The Joint Finance Committee approved a two-year tuition freeze and several other funding decreases to the University of Wisconsin System Thursday as part of a change to Gov. Scott Walker’s biennial budget.
Walker originally proposed the budgetary changes after an audit found the UW System was operating with approximately $648 million in unrestricted surplus revenue. The large surplus, which UW System President Kevin Reilly and the Board of Regents maintain was necessary to maintain the quality of the state’s universities, drew strong criticism from state legislators who said the excess funding was evidence the system was not run effectively.
A particular point of contention for legislators stemmed from the approximately $414 million of the $648 million that came directly from student tuition payments. Walker and state legislators said the tuition freeze would alleviate some of the financial burden students shouldered for the past six years, during which tuition increased by 5.5 percent annually.
The approved budgetary amendment would keep tuition the same as it was during the 2012-'13 academic year until the freeze expires.
An additional portion of the approved motion would decrease funding levels for the UW System from those Walker proposed in his recent budget. Walker originally planned to increase the system’s funding by $181 million, but after the audit was released, he proposed scaling that number back to approximately $94.4 million. The JFC also adopted several reductions in grants and other funding initiatives to the system, including ones that would have funded the upstart UW Flex Option program as well as incentivized grants that would go to schools in the system that show high performance.
Under the approved amendment, Walker and the JFC would require the UW System to pay for many of the new programs and initiatives using its existing surplus. The adopted changes are designed to use enough of the surplus to bring the total reserve down to a more acceptable level, according to Walker and several legislators.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor David Ward said in a statement he thought the funding decreases would be “challenging but manageable.” He also said the reductions would not cause immediate harm but would likely make it difficult for the system to fully fund its initiatives in the future.
“We must work together going forward to rebuild the trust between the university and the Legislature, to ensure that our goals and objectives for the university are aligned and that there is a shared commitment to the level of state investment that will allow the state to maintain a world-class university,” Ward said in the statement.
The JFC is scheduled to continue amending the governor’s budget over the next few weeks. The budget will then move to the full Legislature for consideration before ultimately going to Walker for final approval.
