Gov. Scott Walker officially called for a tuition freeze and an overall decrease in funding for schools within the University of Wisconsin System Wednesday, after an April 19 audit memo reported the system holds approximately $1 billion in surplus revenue as of June 2012.
The surplus, which immediately put the system in hot water with state legislators for its use of tuition dollars, contains approximately $648 million of funding the system has complete control over. Of the $648 million, $414 million came from tuition dollars.
Walker and state legislators criticized the system for implementing annual 5.5 percent tuition increases over the past six years, something state officials said was unnecessary given the size of the surplus.
Walker announced his request for a tuition freeze, which would be added to his recent biennial budget, in a letter from Secretary of Department of Administration Mike Huebsch to the chairs of Joint Finance Committee, who are currently considering the budget. If the JFC adopts Walker’s proposed changes, students attending schools within the system will continue to pay the tuition rate for the 2012-’13 school year over the next two academic years.
Additionally, Walker is recommending the system reduce its revenue by approximately $65.8 million in the next biennium. He also recommended the system use its surplus revenue to fund various initiatives, such as a new incentive grant program that would allocate funding based on school performance, as well as a new UW Flexible Option degree program.
The governor’s new proposal would reduce the system’s overall surplus to approximately $908 million after two years.
Representatives from the UW System have maintained they are already allocating the funding surplus well and that the governor’s additional steps are not necessary.
However, Huebsch and Walker both said the budget revisions are necessary given the system’s accumulation of students’ tuition dollars.
“These revisions present UW System with an opportunity to scrutinize its processes, programs, finances and operations so that in the future, tuition will not be accumulated for special projects under the cloak of maintaining a favorable reserve ratio,” Huebsch said in the letter.
